THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING ROSE
BUSH
(Originally published 20 Aug 1997. Posted and re-published 25 January 2003.)
Elvis
is alive. And he dug up one of my rose
bushes.
How
do I know this? Well, there’s a hole in
my garden where a rosebush used to be.
A very clean hole. And no bush. Not even a branch.
“Oh
hogwash”, you say. “Just because your
bush is missing doesn’t mean that Elvis is alive and digging in your garden!”
“Well,
it’s as good of an explanation as any!”
Here
are the facts. I went out into the yard
to water the roses on Saturday, and one of the roses was gone, root ball and
all. Just a hole. It was a nice rose, but nothing particularly
amazing. Now it’s not there anymore.
At
first I thought it was one of the dogs.
(Yes, that’s right, I have two now.
Since Wobbles chewed up his Invisible Fence, he now has a whole lot more
room to roam. However, he was lonely,
so we picked up a companion from the pound.)
Of course, the problem with having more than one dog or more than one
child or more than one cat is that when something happens, like digging in the
yard, coloring on things that should not be colored on, or hacking up
hairballs, you don’t know who to blame unless you actually see it happen, which
of course is usually never. When we
were a one dog family, it was pretty easy to figure out who was responsible for
mischief in the back yard. But
now? Who knows.
I
would like to think that Wobbles, after several months of training by his
owner, knows better than to dig in the garden.
But, not being a dog (although I feel like one sometimes), I have a difficult time trying to think like
one. (Of course, you have to factor in
that trying to think like a dog is a significant stretch of my mental
capabilities.) Maria (canine number
two), on the other hand, is just a small little pup, and I have a hard time
seeing her being able to dig such a big hole.
But, ants can lift something like 100 times their body weight, so I
guess it is quite possible that a small dog could dig a big hole.
There’s
only one problem with the dog theory---I can’t find the bush. Anywhere.
And I have looked everywhere in the yard. And so has Mrs. Schrader.
Normally
when Wobbles has dug up a bush, he has left his trophy somewhere in the yard
(and I have been able to replant it).
So, the first thing I did when I noticed the hole was to search for the
trophy. None to be found.
“Perhaps,”
you say, “one of the dogs buried it.”
Perhaps my dogs should belong to Mensa.
If my dogs had the wherewithal to dig up a bush and then bury it, root
ball and all, and bury it well enough that the hole would not be noticed, then
they are very, very smart dogs. If that
is the case, then, I feel lucky to have them.
Perhaps
there is something else, something greater responsible. You know, we Catholics are firm believers in
miracles. No, I’m not talking about
seeing Jesus in a plateful of spaghetti or Mother Mary in a sweat stain. I’m talking about the unexplained, like
people having total and complete recoveries from fatal diseases without any
treatment from a doctor.
Perhaps
the total and complete disappearance of my rose bush is one of those miraculous
unexplained phenomenon. A message from
God. After all he spoke to Moses with a
burning bush; why couldn’t he be speaking to us through a disappearing
bush? I know, that as a father, if my
children were behaving the way that most of humanity behaves, I would be
sending some kind of message, too. The
missing bush? Well, the missing bush could
represent God missing from our lives, and the hole in the garden is the hole in
His heart that we have created through our misbehavior.
Then
again, maybe it was Elvis.
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