Codex and I have been married for more than 20 years. Even the most clueless married couples will eventually catch on to unusual patterns. Odd behaviors. Weird defensive postures. Defensive postures that involve thick sticks.

Be me.

I walk downstairs. Codex is sitting on a stool we keep outside our front door for inexplicable reasons. I think it is because delivery folk tend to plop packages on it so we don’t have to waste vital cartooning energy bending over.

Normally, she spends time under the pin oak tree 25 feet from our front door. It is no less than 680º on this particular Friday the 13th. That’s in real degrees, by the way. Canadians can go re-elect Mr. Dashing Socks and stop judging us because we conform to the King’s Measuring Standards.

This is odd. This is different. This should probably be investigated. I mean, it’s kinda my husbandly duty. In sickness and in health. In crazy and in Covid. In… never mind.

It is important that you know our front porch is barricaded by some kind of bush which I have hated for years, but it nevertheless endures as a thick, twenty-foot long and fifteen-foot tall monstrosity. It is the perfect bush for poachers from which the Babylon Bee can kidnap me, hold me at ransom, force me to vomit out hilarious-yet-stolen headlines, and then do it again. Because it THRIVES. NOTHING else in the yard THRIVES like this miracle bush!

They aren’t covered in prickles so I really can’t complain. They *do* have the virtue of being… green. And shady.

Virtuous husband (me) steps outside. “Hey, babe. Everything okay?”

I don’t normally call my wife “babe”, but this is clearly a different kind of Friday night. It involves Friday the 13th and possibly a bit of vodka.

Codex: “There is*something* in the bushes.”

Me: “Um. Okay. Is it Covid? A vaccine? Is the Governor doing a press conference from an unknown location in the bushes guarding our front porch?”

Codex: “What? No. But it is something big. Huge. It shook the entire bush. That thing is twenty feet long and fifteen feet tall – and that’s in real units, not those fake, gay, Justin Trudeau units the Canadians use. It might be a possum, a bobcat, or a coyote.”

Me: “Um. Okay. How did we come to this conclusion?”

Codex: “The entire bush shook like from a big wind. Then I poked it with that stick, and the *entire thing* shook again.”

 

The “stick” she points at is a an old tree branch, more than six feet long and at least three inches in diameter. It is more like a staff. Our idiot English Retriever thinks of it as her outside chew toy. Of course, there is no wind because that would bring us relief and Mother Earth is currently going through a menopausal phase.

I sit. We inexplicably have a *second stool* outside our front door on the other side. I wait. Whatever monstrosity waits with our hell bush is clearly still there. I envision the face-eating ramifications and wish we’d stocked up on more alcohol, instead of extra paper towels.

The bush moved. I saw it. Codex isn’t crazy. An *entire* branch of our beloved, protective bush moved. It is entirely possible that a bobcat got caught unawares, and it also is cursing Canadian measurement systems, Friday the 13th, Mother Gaia, and safely-seeming shady places.

We collectively hold our breaths. Sometimes, marriage has to be a total team effort.

We both watch, enraptured, as a bunny hops forth. It isn’t a normal bunny. It is a juvenile bunny. It is awkward, gangly, and has obviously been looking at frog memes on Gab. It dashes off.

Mischief Managed.

Please, leave Codex an encouraging word. She kinda needs it from you, because this… this was hilarious.