Wolf Husband

Ha. I was right and didn’t even know it. All those long-ago magazine ads I cut up, aiming to paste our grandchildren into the arms of the wolves—why, the one is really him. Here’s evidence:

We were driving home from town the other day. All I wanted was to get into the house and drop my stuff, but heading up the lane, instead of turning into our driveway Paulson continued on. He wanted to show me something.

He’d mowed down the stiltgrass the whole way up to the property line.

(Sorry, but telling you about his despised multiflora roses and honeysuckle and all, I failed to mention the stiltgrass.)

Now, I could understand him not wanting any aliens all the way up our length of the lane which we share with the neighbor. Evil weeds edging the gravel, either side they’re on, can waft their evil seeds across. But he’d mowed beyond our turnoff. We don’t drive past the turnoff. We turn in, toward the house, at which point our dog goes nuts. He hears us coming all right, but only when he sees us does he leap onto the porch, snatch up any loose shoe, and go racing around with it in his maw. That extra distance of lane, occasionally we meander on foot and pick berries.

“This,” I said to Paulson, “is taking things too far. Your weed picking. You’ve got to stop somewhere.” Up ahead lay a verdant spread of the invader grass—the neighbor’s. We’d almost reached it. Was he planning to hack into that, too? “And now there’ll be stiltgrass on our tires,” I scolded. The lane’s narrowness, he would have to turn around, maybe in that splendid, ugly expanse of green, or at least crunch the wheels into the gutter foliage where surely some scraps still cringed, to get us back home. Seeds can travel underfoot, or stick to pant legs or jackets, or even, perish the thought, cars’ wheels. I knew at least that much.

“No,” said Paulson, putting the car in reverse, “I’m like a wolf between traps.”

In Ernest Thompson Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known, explained Paulson (he’s loved this book for forever), in the story about Lobo, the wolf hunters hide traps on either side of a trail, plus they lay a trap in the center of the trail. Typically a wolf loping down the trail, sensing danger, steps to the side, and snap. Lobo, though—smart Lobo—eludes capture. Backing up, Lobo puts his paws one by one in his own pawprints.

Putt-putting the car backwards down the lane, elucidating, Paulson retraced his tracks.

So now I have double proof. My wolf husband. 

 

Look past the blurs, you’ll see the neighbor’s patch.