Communing with nature

“I don’t want to look like a hobo,” said Lulu, looking around to see if anyone was watching before dumping her coffee on the ground.

Lulu, the Boss, and I were communing with nature. It was item #1 on the agenda of the 24-hour girlfest slumber party extravaganza that had just gotten underway.

Before communing with nature we went through the Tim Horton’s drive through. At our destination—a little forest reserve thing near the Boss’s house—the Boss produced some Bailey’s and proceeded to spike our coffees. Because we all know communing with nature is enhanced by Bailey’s Irish Cream. (Bailey’s Irish Cream is not paying me for this post. But they should be.)

Did you know that if you put chickadee feed on your palm and hold it out, actual living chickadees will land on you and eat out of your hand? This, the Boss assured us, was supposed to be an exciting prospect. So exciting that she produced about 10 pounds of birdfeed from her handbag (a handbag being another thing that enhances nature communing).

When Lulu and I sipped our doctored coffee and shook our heads, the Boss was indignant. “Are you kidding me? They land on your HAND, you guys! It’s awesome.”

“When I go to hell and they make me push large a boulder up a hill for all eternity, they’ll also make me do it one handed so that WILD BIRDS can land on my free arm,” I said.

So Lulu and I huddled a safe distance away while the Boss fed the birds. The Boss wins the communing award, for sure.

Lulu was the first-runner-up communer, though, when a few minutes later she was attacked by a squirrel. It ran up her leg. For real. “No word of a lie,” as Lulu herself would say. The only reason Lulu doesn’t take first prize is because her communing was of the involuntary sort.

After the screaming was over, Lulu was more philosophical. “I’m delicious,” she explained, when we asked why she thought the squirrel had so decidedly targeted her. “I’m full of sugar and chocolate at all times, so why shouldn’t I be?”

When we got back to the car, Lulu didn’t want her coffee any more. “Just dump it on the grass,” said the Boss.

“I don’t want to look like a hobo,” said Lulu, who apparently thinks that the vagabondily-inclined are known for dumping their coffee on the ground.

“This grass is dry,” I pointed out, because I like to be helpful. “It could use some liquid.” So Lulu dumped her Bailey’s-laced coffee.

Then we packed the car with nine pounds of birdfeed and went home to commune with Wii Just Dance 4, where I played Patrick Swayze, the Boss played Jennifer Gray, and Lulu provided the color commentary. “I had the time of my life,” the song goes. Totally.