Bat Hour has been getting later.
A few weeks ago the bats began their nightly acrobatics around before nine o’clock. Now they don’t appear until nearly ten. Naturally, this led to a conversation about the Earth’s tilt, daylight, and whether time itself is a rather suspicious human invention.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The evening actually began at the grocery store.
Or rather, just before it.
As we turned onto the road, my daughter let out the kind of gasp that means the car is about to become involved in someone else’s emergency.
“Dog!”
She is, after all, a saver of all animals.
I looked over and saw him.
He definitely looked like a Doug. A big nondescript tan fellow, who was trying to blend in.
Doug was trotting across the road, moving away from the people trying to help him. From where I sat, he didn’t look frightened. He looked determined. Every person encouraging him toward safety seemed to be moving in one direction.
Doug had chosen the other.
To my eyes, he didn’t want rescuing.
He wanted freedom.
We pulled over anyway.
Doug made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in becoming acquainted with us, our good intentions, or anyone else’s leash. He slipped away toward the highway with the confidence of a dog who had places to be.
So we went to the store.
I honestly suspected Doug would be just fine.
My daughter wasn’t so sure.
She kept thinking about him while we wandered the aisles. Eventually I found myself tossing a few cans of Vienna sausages into the cart because, if I were a dog, that would qualify as an epic treat.
On the drive back we decided we’d try one more time.
Instead, we found something much better.
A woman had positioned her car to block the entrance to the busy road. Several other vehicles had pulled over. A man stood patiently nearby with a leash, looking exactly like the sort of person stubborn old farm dogs eventually surrender to.
Nobody appeared to know Doug.
Nobody seemed particularly concerned whose responsibility Doug was.
For a few unexpected minutes, Doug belonged to all of us.
Watching complete strangers quietly interrupt their evenings to keep one wandering dog safe was unexpectedly moving.
Lately it’s been easy to believe the world is becoming a little less gentle.
Then one old farm dog wandered toward a highway…
…and half the town pulled over.
Doug, I suspect, was thoroughly unimpressed.
Eventually we headed home.
My daughter and I settled onto the back deck to await Bat Hour.
We watched the evening light slowly change. That somehow became a conversation about why bat hour keeps getting later, which somehow became the Earth’s tilt, which somehow became time, which somehow became reality itself.
As these conversations often do.
We became so busy discussing the nature of existence that we missed most of Bat Hour.
Neither of us minded.
A few days ago my brain had gone strangely quiet.
Tonight it wanted to wonder again.
Somewhere between one stubborn dog, a sky that refused to hold still, and the impossible fact that the Earth is quietly tipping bath our feet, curiosity found its way back home.
That feels like its own kind of healing.
Be First to Comment