Neighbors

Eight years ago my folks moved to a county west of St. Louis where farmland still envelops pockets of strip malls. Suburbs spider out into the countryside, but feral cats played in my parents’ front yard and distant coyotes yowled at night.

Apparently the wild followed them back to the burbs in October; my dad awoke early one morning to a pack of foxes playing in their back yard, and a family of curious squatters has settled in just past the fenceline.

Within the span of a year, all members of the Myler/Yssel family branches will have moved. Some have gone a few miles, others will leave the country. We’re staying put until after the wee one arrives, but then I expect our apartment will shrink to the size of a peanut.

I wonder what the Johnsons will find in the hills of Calgary. Here, the wildlife is domesticated, but still prone to midnight howling.

And now some gratuitous pictures of my niece, who declared this weekend that I made “good eggs” and worried endlessly that Renate (”Natie”) would escape while she wasn’t looking.