Attribution: Photo by mali desha on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper fresh from “a good night’s sleep,”–a much valued thing as the years pile on with their inclement weather notices that impact Phyllis’s sleep more than the keepers.
The keepers “good night’s sleep” history begins with a bad night’s sleep when his mother saved him from a mysterious attacking monster.
It was in the very earliest days of the family’s depression era move from a comfortable house in town—Barron, to a falling down, leaning farmhouse populated by sparrows and long-established clans of mice.
Temporary sleeping arrangements had the keeper alone on a cot in the living room and waking up to the sound of some kind of monster patrolling the dark living room and about to grab the terrified keeper by the throat.
Call Mom! In fact, scream in panic, for her to show up immediately and save her first born from the clutches of “whatever.”
The “whatever” turned out to be a mouse that had caught its tail in a mousetrap and had been noisily circling on the hardwood floor dragging the mousetrap and obviously looking for its own rescue.
Mom, as Moms are wont to do, solved the problems for both the mouse and the keeper, and it is possible that the keeper, being an exhausted child, went on to a “good night’s sleep.”
