Creature Discomforts

dark blob scuttled away from the big plastic trash barrel by the steps. The yellow bug light by the door cast almost no actual light, and I was too slow to catch the animal in the beam of my flashlight. My guess was a raccoon. The shadow had sped away a bit quickly for a porcupine. Maine has bears, and they sure will raid trash, but I somehow had the feeling that there were no bears on Mount Desert Island. Besides, although Maine’s black bears are much smaller than grizzlies, the blob had been more raccoon size than bear size, and raccoons are notorious garbage thieves. If they’d neatly remove lids, sort through refuse, and deposit rejected items back in trash barrels in the fashion attributed to government investigators, no one would mind too much. As it is, they make a horrible mess. And Maine has lots of raccoons. Consequently, Maine trash barrels left in the open are always equipped with bungee cords, rocks, cinder blocks, or other marginally effective animal-proofing paraphernalia. If you locked your trash in a safe with a combination lock, a determined raccoon would eventually dial the numbers in their correct sequence. Still, when I noticed that the bungee cord on the barrel at the guest house was loose and that the cinder block on the lid was poised to fall off, I felt obliged to set things right.
    I put the dogs in the cottage, went back outside, secured the bungee cord, and settled the cinder block squarely in the middle of the barrel lid. Just as I finished, the pale, bobbing beam of a flashlight appeared on the road in the direction of Gabrielle’s house, and I heard people talking. Having spent the evening blundering my way through human social interaction, I felt desperately eager to avoid even the slightest contact with anyone of my own species, which should properly be known as Homo palaver. At the same time, I wanted to avoid making the blatantly unfriendly gesture of dashing into the cottage and shutting the noisy screen door. Consequently, I slipped around the comer of the cottage to wait until the passersby had become just that by passing by. Within seconds, I’d identified them as Quint and Effie. They must, of course, be walking home.
    With the frankness of one member of a couple speaking to another in presumed privacy, Quint said, “Well, at least Gabbi won’t be able to inflict Norman Axelrod on us from now on. Him and his goddamned needling. For Christ’s sake! Any charitable donation, any charitable enterprise, has tax benefits. What did he think? That Gabbi could afford to just give all her land away? He knew damned well that this is not some shady tax dodge, but he would just not let up.”
    “What he was, was hostile,” Effie agreed as they were directly in front of the cottage. “But we’re still stuck with Wally and with that damned Opal the Snake. The next time that woman tells me that development is inevitable, I’m going to kick her. Don’t think I haven’t come close!”
    “Opal is an old friend of—”
    “I am sick of hearing that she’s an old friend of Gabbi’s! So what? The fact is that Opal and Wally are nothing but philistines. Business types,” she added damningly. “You know what Wally did before? Ran a chain of drugstores! And then he sold out so he could start ruining…“ Effie’s irate voice trailed off as she and Quint continued home.
    Instead of feeling relief at my freedom from human company, I found myself listening intently for any overtones or undertones that might waft back toward me. Furthermore, once I was back inside the cottage, it seemed disquietingly clear that Rowdy and Kimi were in some peculiar mood that I couldn’t fathom. As I wandered around turning off lights, straightening cushions, brushing my teeth, and trying to discover what, if anything, this Holly Winter person customarily wore to bed, the dogs followed me, but not in a peaceful, cozy way. In fact, zipping back and forth around me, their tails carried finlike above their backs, they moved with a distinctly predatory air, like furry gray sharks circling a victim in preparation for the kill. Not that I expected an attack. On the contrary, never for a second was I afraid of the dogs themselves. What disturbed me was my complete inability to interpret their behavior: And I somehow knew that if I had lost my ability to understand dogs, I had lost my comprehension of my mother tongue.
    “What is it?” I asked them plaintively. “What’s the trouble here? You expect