Underneath the sunroom of my home is a neat little crevice, just big enough to form a "creature condo." All manner of beasts have wormed their way under the sunroom - a stray calico cat, a baby bird with an injured wing, a family of brown bunnies - all kinds of critters. One day, I was surprised to see what I thought was a big, odd cat in my backyard, until I realized it was actually a red fox. I pulled up the blinds for a closer look and it darted... you guessed it, under the sunroom.

"Fred Sanford" - as I called the red fox – moved on in time, and the creature condo had a vacancy. Then one day, sitting in my sunroom with my son and crazy old dog, I saw a small face at the sliding glass door, gazing in at us. Startled, I nudged my son and we realized it was a groundhog. He may have thought we were part of a human zoo and was deciding whether to feed us or not. Wisely, he did not.

Continuing the Sanford and Son theme, I called this new creature Grady.

"Grady the Groundhog" is a slow mover, so I have to knock on the glass door when I see him in the yard to let him know I'm going to wait five minutes and unleash hell (my crazy old dog may have a hitch in her gitalong, but she can surely take a slow moving groundhog.)

I'm fond of Grady, but the other day, I heard what I thought was a knocking at the back door. Grady? I thought. Now that would freak me out and/or win money from America's Funniest Home Videos. As it turns out, Grady is building his home underneath mine by hammering on the post that holds up the sunroom.

He's trying to build his home by knocking down mine!

I'm trying to remind myself that he doesn't realize this fact. Just like my neighbor across the way must be a really deep sleeper not to realize his dog barks out the front window every night – or I should say - at 2 AM in the morning.  My neighbor on the other side plays music with a reverberating bass line that makes the metal-box of a sunroom I work in actually vibrate at times. They don't intend to disrupt my life in the least, in fact, I would say that have no idea they've impinged upon my world at all.

Is it possible to coexist with so many different types of creatures horning in on our turf? With rare exceptions, nobody sets their alarm clock in the morning to schedule time to disrupt other peoples' lives. Maybe this is just another example of how we're all in our own little worlds, whether we're furry and four-legged or upright and clean-shaven. If only we could find a way to give each other the room and the respect we all need, coexistence would be possible.

Sacred Space

There are eight million stories in the naked city,
all of them overlapping.
Help us find a way to take our homes with us,
to carry them inside us so that we're never lost.
Create a mobile sacred space for each of us
so that there's no need for us to clash or collide.
Help us to play well with others.
Allow us a portion of Your eminent domain
so we may build our homes and tear down walls.
Help us to exist both in a little white house with a picket fence
and the community that surrounds it as well.

-Ruth Williams