I was watching a Cubs game the other day, a slow-moving duel between two ace pitchers, and while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Oops, sorry. Sometimes I wax poetic when I doze off.
Anyway, the tapping was so soft I wondered who or what might be gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
When I got there, of course, there was nobody.
“Maybe that woodpecker,” I thought, the pesky critter that came around last summer to bonk his beak on a porch pillar. “Only this, and nothing more.” I shrugged and went back to the Cubs game.
A few minutes later, there it was again. I dashed to the door and flung it open.
Nobody.
Maybe a Sox fan, I thought. Who else would tap-and-dash on a Cubs fan’s door during the game? “Probably Hans down the block,” I muttered. “He’s a Sox fan.” He’s an otherwise reasonable man, but we all have our blind spots, don’t we?
I stood at the door, waiting to catch him lurking behind the arbor vitae, but then I heard the tapping again — this time from the wall next to me.
The wall that led into the garage.
Uh-oh, I thought, because the garage doors were closed. I had left them open when I went for a bike ride an hour or so earlier, but I made sure to close the doors when I came back inside.
So anybody — or anything — rummaging around in the garage hadn’t just shown up. They had to have been in there for at least an hour.
I opened the garage door and there he was — a fat, healthy groundhog, staring at me from under the car’s front bumper. Instead of dashing out through the open garage door, he scurried into the cluttered corner, making a sound of tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Wow, I thought. So there really are visitors less welcome than a Sox fan during a Cubs game. Go figure.
I tried prodding him out with a walking stick. Nothing doing. The only change was now he was clacking his teeth together, and not in an inviting “let’s play” way.
He was tucked into that garage corner where you stuff things you don’t want to deal with right now — or anytime in the next few years. Old fishing rods, archery equipment, uncomfortable collapsible chairs that would send you to the chiropractor if you sat on them through an outdoor concert but can’t bear to throw away because somebody might want them, even though you’ve offered many times and nobody, not even a Sox fan, would have them.
And now, added to the corner clutter, is a twenty-pound, teeth-clacking groundhog that you’re absolutely certain you’ll have no future use for.
I have a live-trap for such occasions, so I set it with a dollop of peanut butter bait and went back to watch the Cubs game. I left the garage door open, in case my unwanted visitor might choose to amble back home on his own. Or invite his family to come join him in his new digs over a welcome-plate of peanut butter. It was a gamble, but I was out of better ideas.
With the Cubs game still moving in slow-motion, I had time to consider my situation. How ironic, I thought, after a year-and-a-half of living endless lockdown “Groundhog Days,” we would finally be able to get vaccinated and open our doors to the world again — and be besieged by groundhogs.
Life’s funny like that, isn’t it? Although funny didn’t seem like the right word at the time.
The game ended with a narrow Cubs loss — again — and I went back to the garage to see if I had a live-trap to empty. I didn’t, and the peanut butter was untouched.
But the garage, thankfully, was now free of the rodent that would return (I hoped) nevermore.
I guess he decided it was time to move on, now that he couldn’t hear the Cubs game through the wall to my chamber door. In his wake he had scattered dried leaves from the corner that had escaped my rigorous spring-cleaning.
He made a mess of my clutter, too, knocking down old fishing poles that were doing just fine, held upright by years of spider webs. And on his way out the door, he toppled a toboggan that sliced through the thin wire that carries electricity to close the garage door.
I was able to splice the wires together, and then all was back to normal.
But the experience wasn’t all bad, in the end. It showed me that I’m really going to have to clean out that disgraceful cluttered corner of my garage.
I’ll get right to it next summer, if the Cubs are having a better year and they don’t need my advice from the couch.
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
