One more thing

I believe in balance in the universe, the yin and the yang, do unto others and all of that stuff. I have read a lot of philosophy. I believe in a higher being, the power of positive thinking and what goes around, comes around. This makes it more real to me...

This morning, I'm sitting at the breakfast table drinking coffee, reading the newspaper and I see this small black object dangling at an odd angle from a tree in my neighbors yard, it's just hanging slightly beyond our hibiscus flower bushes but it's definitely there. I watch it move around in the wind in an odd erratic manner. It's unidentifiable but truly looks like either a cigar hanging from fishing line or "something else." That "something else" was a horrifying yet amusing thought along the lines of a Beavis and Butthead episode or perhaps even South Park. I go back to reading the newspaper but that dangling thing keeps nagging at me. I get up to look out the window and I think it's very odd and bizarre. It gives me a weird feeling. I don't often get weirded out by things and so this was a red flag. So my brother wanders into the kitchen, "I feel sick. I think I ate something bad last night..." He's a little grayish too. "What is that?" I say to him. Bitterly and irritable, he goes over to the window to check it out. "What?" He looks outside..."There's nothing. No, it's "the owl." My father had hung an owl on our deck to scare away the squirrels that last year had wreaked havoc on several of our lawn chairs and eviscerated an innocent lonely seat cushion but with enough defiance, they had left lots of stuffing all over the deck as if to say, "WE WERE HERE!" "No," I said impatiently. "Not the owl. THAT!" I pointed at the dangling doody that was hanging off our neighbors tree. "It's a fishing lure." He said complacently and then went about munching his cereal. I had to investigate. I couldn't leave that thing hanging outside our kitchen window.

I went out across the yard close to the dangling thing and realized as I got closer, it was moving yet there was no wind. Whoa. That was weird. As I got closer, I noticed the wings, it was flying in circles. It was a cicada. It was trapped on something. My childhood neighbor used to tie cicadas with dental floss or some fishing line and fly them around the neighborhood like a toy. I considered the fact that this might be a poor victim that had managed to escape only to tangle himself in a tree and would soon die a death of starvation and heat exhaustion from the scorching sun. I grabbed a pole and started swatting at it pinata style but I was just too short. I couldn't reach. So I called my poor nauseated brother to come help. "Nothing should die that way," I begged him. He answered, "Aren't those things harmful anyway?" He batted the creature down from what turned out to be a very thick spider web and it flew away. "Hate to see the spider that made THAT web." He grumbled as he ambled off to a world of Pepto Bismol salvation. I later found out that day about the great review we got from Alicyn Leigh of Long Island Press. So I learned what? A "dangling doody" is not always what it seems and this just reinforced my belief that small bit of cosmic Karma, yin yang, do unto others stuff really exists.