Flimsy Whimsy: Lynx
Few people have ever seen a lynx. It’s because they don’t exist. They’re just an urban myth. The tracks that people see are from overfed monstrous tabby cats. In dire times, people let them wander in ravines and forests. It’s the punishment called the forced fast for fatness. Our tabby with the M (for moron) on its forehead pretended it was a lynx one day.
My neighbor, whose house backs onto the city forest (not a forest, but urbanites exaggerate) was raking his leaves. From across the busted fence when he approached me. “You know, the other day I got up and sat outside to have coffee before going to work. You’ll never guess what I seen!”
I guessed incorrectly, “A grizzly bear. A big one. A bearded convict?”
“No you silly old corndog. I saw a lynx.”
“Yeah, I think I saw one too,” I agreed. There was no point informing him his lynx was my fat and lazy tabby. He’d argue with me all night, and then complain that I interrupted him from finishing his leaf raking. The argument would be retold and rehashed by our wives the next day. Not worth it. Neighbors are supposed to be civil – most of the time.
You see, I’d been through all this before, some 60 years ago. I’d come in off the gravel road whooping it up about the lynx I saw. Grandpa picked up the old orange cat, probably some ancient ancestor of the one I have now, ‘ceptin that one wasn’t as heavy.
He grinned mischievously and asked, “Did it look like this, by chance?”
That’s when I discovered lynx don’t exist. But there’s no point in letting everybody else know. Best kept secret, like the whereabouts of wasp nests and good doctors. Coons? Now those guys are a different story.
Ohhh! You may be lucky it’s all just house cats, i am sure Lynx would not be such a good experience if you actually came upon such a creature. Here we have mountain lions or “wild cats” I told my kids over and over again…even told the transient couple living in our garage. (She swore she saw a bear like creature). I had to eat my words when we found a mountain lion eating half a deer he had killed near our home. The bear like creature (which i told her could not have been a coon because none of them ever get that size) was in fact a HUGE! monster coon. These guys, (because of our wildlife preserve status) apparantly are raised knowing we can’t kill them. Because you will be sitting on the porch and one of those monsters will just casually come up to sniff you…like snow white. I just can’t ever settle upon such things. You’d have to be rabid to come up to me like that:P
The last one came up to me and was like…”Yo??? SUP?” and I was like …”Oh HALE NO!” (Gangsta moment followed:P)
Raccoon ran….i lectured his running figure *broom raised triumphantly in the air* to never visit me like that again:P
As far in the great North that you live…i think it’s kinda sad if ya’ll have no big cats to scare your kids with by telling tales about them. Seems you all would be wall to wall with wild life:P
Apparently* and just forgive the other Sp mistakes. Still recovering from my flu:P