“ALERT!!” the text message read.
Considering my recent past, the word was enough to make me think I should grab my “go bag” and prepare to evacuate again.
Only this alert was to warn me that a malicious virus had infected my phone. If I didn’t act immediately, it claimed, the phone would send out photos of me to a pornography website. To avoid this, all I had to do was click on the link below. We all know how that would’ve turned out. Sorry, hackers, you’ll have to do better than that to get the attention of my already rattled nerves.
A bird chirped outside my window as I was reading the message. I am not sure if it was singing or laughing with me. I burst into a rendition of “When the red, red, robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along, along.”
I don’t think the bird was a robin, but that was the first song that came into my head.
The birds were back. Well, at least one was breaking the eerie silence that followed the fires.
Even wildlife was too stunned to make a sound.
I am not a great fan of coyotes, but I felt a sense of relief when I heard a pack of them howling into the night, an irritating cry of normalcy.
Even the piles of carefully crafted dirt, indicating that the gophers had returned to my front yard, struck me as a positive sign. It wasn’t all that long ago that I had scattered sound pipes on the lawn to deter them. The sound the pipes emitted was thought to be unpleasant to their furry little ears. But my gophers took a liking to the sound, and settled happily into their underground condos that now provided continuous concerts.
Welcome home, gophers. I should have known that even a catastrophic firestorm and a few mudslides would not keep you away.
Altadena folks are a strong lot.
Email Patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her at patriciabunin.com