Animal kingdom

“What the f….?” I could have sworn I heard some howling. Wolf-like howling. Apparently I’m not going crazy because my sister smiles and says “Yeah, it’s wolves. It’s like the North Pole.” No shit. I look outside and - while it’s still gray of course, it’s bright from the snow because that white shit is everywhere. And now there are wolves, too?

Later that day, my mom walks in the house from the driveway.
“I almost ran over the raccoon,” she said, a comment that doesn’t elicit any responses because of the apparent frequency of such run-ins.

Minutes earlier, my dad had an animal spotting of his own. A spider was crawling on the living room ceiling. He returned from the basement with his ‘spider killer’ – an approximately 20-foot tool he assembled by connecting those long pipes from vacuum cleaners and attaching a cloth at the top. Its purpose is to kill spiders. And with one quick move, the spider is dead. And I’m wondering what animal encounter will be next. Wolves. Racoons. Spiders. Oh well, I think, keeping my ‘keep it positive’ theme going. Better than rats in Manhattan.