Devonne Brown

A groundhog attacked the lily in the flower bed in the front of the house. For three years the lily had grown to the size of a bushel basket and was covered in buds. The varmint  didn’t eat the leaves. Oh no. It waited until the buds were ripe and ready to burst into the vibrant petals with peach colored centers fading out into cream colored velvet. Then it chomped them off before they could blossom. It was covered with ripe buds ready to bust wide open one day, and then gnawed off memories the next. There were only a handful of buds left.

 Lucille was fit to be tied.

 Nobody messed with Lucille’s flowers. Not nobody, not no how, especially not a stinking groundhog. She’d skin that thing alive if she thought she could. Her eyes glowed red at the thought of the thing. Lucille despised it. 

Lucille sought advice from friends and neighbors alike. The best course of action was to set a trap with cat food. A delicacy no self-respecting groundhog could resist, they said. She borrowed a hunter’s trap from a friend as directed, waited, and watched. That damned groundhog would rue the day he’d ever set eyes on her lily. 

Lucille smiled as she put the finishing touches on the trap, pulled the spring up, and went round back to water her back garden, a red and orange forested fairyland of impatiens and begonias that held no interest for the groundhog. She puttered and willed the groundhog into the trap.

By the time Lucille had checked all the begonias in the ground, the impatiens in the beds, and in the pots she thought she’d go and look at the trap. Even though it had only been a little while, hope burned hot in her heart. Sure enough, something moved in the trap. Dammit, it was a cat. A yowling, howling, terrified cat. 

Lucille let it loose, and started all over again. Damned groundhog.