I have heard it said that "to everything there is a season and time for every purpose under heaven..."  And that sounds swell, but I think most people are like me—we want things now and we want it our way.  It was in that frame of mind that I found myself at odds with the universe: locked out of my house at 3:00 am and whirling inside the chaos theory.

           

This story involves a crow, an owl of sorts, a small black dog, a warm June night and a very odd bug.  I am reminded of that old camp fire song:  "there once was a lady who swallowed a fly....she swallows the spider to catch the fly, swallows a bird to catch the spider and on and on until she swallows a mortgage on a  home in the suburbs..."

           

But, before the story fades to black with a song wafting over the credits.  There once really was a girl with a small black dog who swallowed a mortgage on a small house outside of a big city.

 

The house and the girl and the dog were surrounded by large Cedar trees.  At night they could hear raccoons chatter and coyotes sneak down the ravine across the street.  Everything was fine until the rains of spring ended and a clear warm June descended.

           

And so did the crows—two big black crows dived bombed and my dog and I whenever we emerged from the back door.  While I am not used to being attacked by large rapturous birds—no one messes with my dog and gets away with it.  So, off I went to get expert advice from the guys at the hardware store.  They set me up with a very large and very fake Great Horned Owl.  I planted the owl on a pole right in the middle of the backyard.  Every couple of days, I changed its location.  Usually under the cover of darkness, I'd move it to the bushes, then the lower branches of the maple tree.

           

And, the crows disappeared.  She swallowed the owl to catch the crows.....Soon I noticed an unusual quiet.  In an odd reversal of the famous Hitchcock film, all the birds fled my yard.

           

One warm June night as I sat on my deck enjoying the stars and feeling smug that I had conquered the great crow-evil, I spied a small tiger clinging to the screen door.  I jumped up and peered more closely at the striped insect.  Yuck!  Carefully reaching behind the screen, I shut the solid backdoor, so the creature could not venture inside and infect my house.   I then realized that I had just locked myself outside with that same creature.

           

Upon closer examination, I found that the tiger was a three-inch-long beetle with yellow and black stripes.  It looked like something out of a mummy's tomb.  Its pincers could easily have strangled a moose.

           

But I was crow-conqueror, princess warrior.  So, I grabbed the handy hose and sent a spry shooting in its direction.  That is when it hissed at me!  She swallowed the owl to catch the crows and swallowed the crows to catch the beetle.  Now, it was dark, I was locked outside with a tiger-like hissing beetle.  I sent up a prayer for crows.

           

After I climbed through a window and let my dog in the front door, I jumped on-line to find out what alien species had landed.  After learning much more about beetles than I ever wanted to know, I discovered that my hissing visitor was a June Beetle.  I further surmised that my messing around with the ecosystem created a situation where no natural predators to beetle larvae existed. I brought this upon myself.  The crows!  The owls!  The hissing beetle! I had swallowed enough. The universe won. I slept with the covers pulled tightly over my head.