Last Rites on Stauffer
Oh my gosh, whatever happened to quiet Sunday mornings on Stauffer? Dennis was helping his son Ken with items at his home and I had an errand to run. I have done it a thousand times: I push the garage opener that is clipped to the visor of my car as I start the car. I always make sure the garage door is completely up before I put the car in reverse to avoid any hardship on hubby Dennis in regard to repairs. This morning all was clear and I had backed up a total of a foot when I heard a pop. I braked and thought about things that could have been at the rear of the car: leaves, a plastic bag or maybe a plastic cup. I pulled a head and decide to check it out.
The last thing in the whole world I expected to see right behind the right rear wheel of my tire was that I had backed over the largest of our Koi fish. The sixteen year old Koi was no more. Yes, that’s right, the Koi that are sheltered in the 100 gallon horse tank with a window screen over it for extra protection. How could there be so much mess from a few seconds of a radial tire meeting a Koi fish? We have dressed the Koi pond with rocks overhanging the water’s edge as they do jump and flip in the pond water. In fact the screen over the horse tank was put there after one of the Koi had jumped out onto the garage floor to it’s death eleven years ago. I checked the tank and the screen only allowed several inches on each end for an opening and here we had a five pound fish dead a foot from the tank. It was a sunny Sunday morning with lots of traffic going by and I am scrambling like a house on fire. I was hoping the city police would not take this moment to do a drive by on Stauffer as I had a total of two different snow pushers with blood and entrails on them that I was desperately trying to wash up with a garden hose out in the middle of the driveway. The next challenge was to clean the garage floor and get every bit of “extra” stuff cleaned up. Just my luck, the hose got away from me as I was trying to use the broom at the same time. Oh well, the garage needed one last fall cleaning before the snowflakes come.
When Dennis came home and saw the drive flooded, the garage door open with a totally wet floor, a garden hose that he had already stashed for the winter strung out and the snow pushers leaning on the house, he came in the house and just looked at me with a quizzical look on his face. Dennis totally understood the situation and he well knows that strange things happen and tomorrow is another day. All this and just think it was only 10:30 on a sunny Sunday morning.