Ant lions and Dorothy shoes

Every travail can be eased by a hummingbird at my patio feeder.

Nature's flash is so exceedingly wonderful compared to those darn pink and red Oz shoes that shed glitter creating a trail of every step of a day at preschool.  The clues are now embedded in the carpet, defying the vacuum cleaner.  The clues, alas, do not pertain to the current mystery. Dorothy and Toto are skipping up the wrong brick road.

Walking backwards, not a bit cowardly, are the ant lions aka antlions brought for Show And Tell in a mayo jar half full of sand.   With the sand carefully spread in a tray, a proud boy displayed his skill at finding the antlions.  We were all in awe at how fast these insects could back themselves under the sand again.  I'd forgotten the childhood lore about these "doodlebugs" that make conical pits to trap ants.

Maybe Dad's tax stuff had fallen into a conical pit.  The accountant mailed it First Class Priority at her post office, about two zip codes away on July fourteenth. Then flying monkeys got it.

The accountant and I have been a WEE tad stressed about the missing envelope full of social security numbers and investment data.  For two days I've left notes in my mailbox for the carrier suggesting that the large envelope might have been placed in one of the large parcel lock-boxes and the key not left for me.  Phoning the post office for my zip code was futile.  No one ever answered.  There's no one behind the curtain.

This evening it occurred to me to look inside the antique milk delivery box on my doorstep.  The milk box from Roberts Dairy has been sitting there in the hot sun for years with a gigantic purple rubber tarantula on top, and a winter faucet cover inside.  There was the 10 x 13 inch white and green envelope with postal labels.  Had the letter carrier put it there last week?  Had I been lacking imagination to look in that place instead of, say, my mailbox?

Nope.  My neighbor had gone to his mailbox for the first time since his eighty-eighth birthday last week.  He found a key for a parcel box, and thought he received another birthday present.  But instead he found my dad's tax package.  He placed it in my "tin bucket" milkbox, then phoned me last evening to make sure I got it.  Then he told me about his plane having too short range to reach Japan from Iwo Jima or Lusan and a few other war in the Pacific stories I didn't retain in my euphoria.  Wild Bill is my hero today!  He's got a brain, a heart, and courage.

Oh, the Roberts Dairy milkbox replaced our Skyline Dairy milkbox.  We were very sad when Roberts bought out Skyline in the Sixties.  Roberts never could make Swiss Almond ice cream taste right!  Never mind about the rubber tarantula.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder