CALL OF THE WILD

There they go...can hardly see them, though, being that they're fully camoed out. I squint, narrowing my vision, trying make out who these mysterious early morning figures are; silhouetted against the faint lightening in the east. I have a very distraught labrador at my feet...funny...usually she's afraid of strange things in the dark, but now seems very eager to go outside. The figures part ways, one carrying a bow and the other a cased shotgun. The archer disappears into the woods behind our home while the gunman commandeers Ramsey's Chevy and canoe. Boy, he's not going to be happy when he finally rolls out of the sack at 9:45 and finds his wheels gone.

This covert operation is making me skittish. I go to rouse my sleeping children and gather them in a safer, interior room of the house (do we have an interior room?). I open the girls' bedroom door to find in Taylie's bed a very fat cat blinking sleepily in the warm spot left after her sister's departure. Inspection of the boys' room reveals an empty top bunk...

The time is 6:43 AM. These two kids usually have to be pried out of bed with a crowbar or a glass of cold water. Maybe I should start using a duck call and a deer grunt...or a whiff of "Doe in Estrus" waved under their noses...