Have you ever noticed the positions your animals get into? They make it look as if they invented the word `relax’. They stretch out, especially in the heat, so every potential draft will ease slowly over their languid bodies. They make it look so damn easy.
Now you might think that this is a comment on my own inability to relax, which is far from the truth. In fact, it brings to mind an experience of many moons ago when my then-husband came home to find me lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling or into space. He asked what was I doing?
I said “nothing.”
With an incredulous look on his face, he said, “What do you mean, nothing?”
“I mean nothing. I’m doing nothing. As in, nothing.” Seemed pretty clear to me.
“How could you just be doing nothing,” he asked. “You have to be doing something!”
Now THIS was a man who had a hard time relaxing!
I tried to search for what it was I was doing, and all I came up with was … in trying to satisfy the question … “I guess I’m daydreaming .. or just thinking.”
And then, with the same confused face, he asked, “How can you just lie there and do nothing?”
Well, I thought I had just come up with an answer as to what I was doing, but I let that go, and said, “Here, just lie down, and kind of stare into space and let your mind relax. You know, just drift around a bit.”
He lay down and for all intents and purposes, assumed the position one would take if they were to relax. He looked up at the ceiling.
Then he looked at me.
“I don’t know how you can just do nothing. I can’t do nothing.”
I don’t really remember what happened after that, except that he wasn’t next to me anymore. Probably feeling guilty for now having the audacity to have actually spent a few moments of my life doing nothing, I’m sure I joined him and made it my business to start doing something.
But I think the animals still have the right idea. They have learned the fine art of doing nothing, of just being in the moment. They stretch out … close their eyes … take a deep breath and they’re off into dreamland or wherever animals go when they close their eyes. We have such a lot to learn from them … and this is one of their best lessons.
It’s the weekend – try and relax!
Animals
Does A Cricket Matter?
On a recent Wednesday night I came home rather late, but being as I wasn’t tired yet, decided to watch a Will and Grace rerun. Settled in to the TV room, I was aware of the usual summer evening sounds – tree frogs, katydids, crickets. One cricket in particular seemed quite loud, possibly on the porch roof right outside one of the windows. I went over to listen; it really was quite loud. Then I realized the sound was, in fact, coming from inside the room. The cricket had somehow managed to get up to the second floor and in the corner behind the kitty litter box. It was too dark for me to see him, so on and on he sang, while I wondered how I was going to get him back outside.
Trapping and releasing insects is not new for me, but I do like to have the advantage of seeing them first and ideally, not having them jump or crawl on me. Daylight would work better and I figured tomorrow would be soon enough to figure this out. I went to bed, listening to the cricket in the next room singing … singing for a mate despite the odds of finding her in the room of a house, singing for help, singing his last song … I couldn’t tell.
In the morning I moved things around and got a quick view of him – a good-sized black field cricket. But he jumped further back and was lost to me again. I didn’t want him to be mangled by the cats, nor to die without even some grass beneath him, but there didn’t seem any easy way to get him.
That evening, back in the room, it was totally quiet … had he died? Then I heard a quiet little chirp. I did whatever a human can do in reaching out to an insect … just opening myself to let him know I’d get him back to his home if he’d let me help him. Amazingly, not too much later, he appeared on the carpet in front of the TV … no big jumps, probably tired and dehydrated. Or maybe he knew his window of opportunity to get home had opened. I checked the cats and they weren’t noticing, so got a box lid and quickly covered him. Slid the piece of cardboard under him and ran downstairs – front porch lights on, and laid the makeshift rescue trap on the walk’s edge next to the grass.
I lifted the lid, but there he sat. I tapped the cardboard and yet he sat.
`C’mon, little guy – it’s your grass … go!’ and I tapped the cardboard again. This time he did a cricket sized leap into the dark, wet lawn. He made it.
Does a cricket’s life matter? It did to that one. And I’d say, by the quiet little grin that stuck itself on my face for the rest of the night, that little life mattered to me, too.
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Still A Dreamer 