Encroachment

     The water bottle missed the cage and splashed across the road. My arm dangled until I could muster the energy to pull on the brake. Something odd glimpsed from the corner of my eye lingered in my mind. I twisted my feet to unclip my shoes from the pedals, laid my bike in the grass, and went back to retrieve the bottle.
     My cleats clattered against the pavement as I tottered along, my legs spindly and birdish from an idle winter. I glanced over my shoulder and had an inward chuckle, recognizing an overflowing trash can as the object of my distraction.
     I took a long drink. Standing still, I felt the cold early spring air. My eyes strolled across the road, pausing when they reached the trash. It wasn't overflowing after all; there was something straddling the opening, crouched like a gargoyle feasting on leftovers.
     I took a few tenuous steps towards it, fascinated. With its muddy brown skin and mossy green hair covering its head and back, I could understand how I had mistaken it for lawn debris. I had caught glimpses of swamp goblins, but I had never seen one up close.
     It was sizing me up, seeing if I would challenge it for its meal, and if so, whether I'd be a worthy challenger. It must have decided it wasn't worth the risk, and it hopped down behind the bin.
     I took two more steps, craning my neck to try to get another look. Huge, dark eyes peaked out to see if I was still there.
     "What were you eating?" I asked. "Looked like Chinese. Lo mein?"
     The goblin picked up a stick and started banging on the side of the can. I nearly fell, back-stepping to a safer distance. I picked up my bike and the goblin lowered the stick, no longer feeling the need to cow me with aggressive noise. I climbed onto the bike and leaned on one leg, watching to see what it would do. It set the stick down and crossed the road, its eyes fixed on me. It started down a path through a clearing between two houses, one with a brick façade, the other with a stone façade.
     I edged up to the grass, testing the ground for bike-worthiness; it was solid. I rode behind the goblin, staying in first gear. The path led to a wooded area, a last remnant of wild nestled into suburbia.
     The goblin stopped and so did I. It looked at me as if to say, "What?" It waited to see that I wasn't going to do anything before turning back to the walkway.
     It wasn't that long ago when I would ride through this area and the trees still outnumbered the houses. It is a desirable neighborhood: good school district, close to shopping, wooded lots.
     The goblin stopped and turned on me again; I propped myself up, my cleat sinking into the mud. For a second I could have sworn it was smiling, but it dropped its head and marched on.
     The edge of the woods was looming near, and the ground was starting to get rough for my road tires. I hated to turn back, but I wasn't going to get much further on my bike, and my cleats weren't made for hiking. The goblin gave me one last glance before disappearing into the woods, and I raised my hand in a little wave.
     I was excited, eager to tell my story to the first available audience. I rehearsed it in my head, but somehow it felt like something was lost in the telling. I couldn't quite convey the underlying tension, or the brief camaraderie I felt. I had a sense of mutual curiosity, but for all I knew I might have narrowly escaped being torn to pieces.
     A man was walking back to his house, flipping through his mail. Being on the edge of his lawn I felt compelled to offer an explanation, even though he didn't seem to want one.
     "I was following a swamp goblin."
     "Yeah, we get them around here. Get into the trash all the time. Dog usually keeps them away from our place. You wanna be careful. Those things can be fierce."
     "They're supposed to be shy around people. Just scavengers."
     He dropped his handful of mail to his hip and cocked his head at me. "I've got a buddy who saw a pack of them take down a black bear."
     I had heard stories about swamp goblins running off with the family pet or kidnapping children, but from what I had read they were myths. "Wow."
     "I'd keep my distance if I were you." He turned his attention back to his mail.
     I rode over to the garbage can and picked up the discarded container. There was a strand of carrot, a bit of scallion, part of a noodle; I was right about the lo mein. I tossed it back into the can.
     I wouldn't be able to pick up after it every time, and even if I did, it would be a futile gesture. Knocking over the trash is enough for many to want them eliminated, but what about when one discovered a door not fully closed and wandered into a family room, or a curious child looked to one as a playmate? Scavenger or predator, the creatures were wild, and that means potentially dangerous.

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     I stood beside the carcass. It was the one I had followed, symbolically if not factually. I couldn't bring myself to look closely at it, and probably couldn't have discerned one from another anyway.
     There was a light mist in my headlights, rain aspiring to be snow. My bike was hung up in my garage now, probably for the season. I don't brave the cold or the slippery roads.
     I wore gardening gloves to protect my hands, but wondered if they offered any real security or merely created a psychological barrier. I laid it in the trunk over a couple of garbage bags. I glanced around, feeling like a suspicious character shoving a dead body into my trunk. It seemed like its face should be frozen in an expression of surprise, maybe terror, whatever last emotion it must have been feeling when it realized it was about to die, but it only looked lifeless.
     The wipers skittered across the windshield, and I thought about how I needed to stop procrastinating and replace them. Would it be worth the extra money to get winter blades? Before long it would be real snow. Were they actually better at handling snow, or was it just a marketing ploy? Hard as I tried to occupy my mind with what was in front of me, my thoughts kept going to what was behind me. Arriving home, I opened the trunk, tossed the poor thing into a wagon and wheeled it to the back yard.
     "That's an ugly looking thing," Viv said. My wife snuggled up to me, her sweater not enough to fend off the cold. I squeezed her, glad to have her with me for my ceremony.
     I pulled the hood of my poncho up over my head as the rain started to pick up. "Guess we'd better bury him quick," I said, shoveling a pile of dirt onto its midsection.
     "Don't you want to say a few words?" Viv asked.
     I set the head of the shovel down, peered into the grave. "I felt like you deserved better than to be left sprawled out on the side of the road." I put in another shovelful, this time over its legs. "Wait," Viv said. Her poncho was starting to stick to her sweater, and the pit was turning to mud. "Go in peace." She scooped up another pile of dirt and tossed it in, then added, "We'll miss you."
     When the hole was filled, I shoved a stick into the ground as a marker and we ran back into the house. Viv put a kettle on the stove and we changed out of our wet clothes.
     "'We'll miss you?'" I teased as we sat down for tea.
     She laughed. "I felt like something more should be said. It was the best I could come up with on the spot."
     "Was it true? Will you miss him?"
     "Probably not the next time I see one robbing my garden, but I worry we focus too much on what a nuisance they are and maybe we overlook some unseen benefits. What if we wipe them all out? There could be unintended consequences."
     "I don't blame people for wanting to keep their families safe," I said, "or even their gardens and garbage cans, but it's hard not to feel like there's an injustice to it. The swamp goblins are just trying to adapt to their new neighbors."
     "In a way that's what the people are doing, too, but our way of adapting is to get rid of the things that make us uncomfortable."
     We stood by the back door and looked out at the crooked branch standing vigil over our departed friend, the rain-softened soil barely supporting it. I felt guilty for rushing the job and not planting it deeper. I slipped my poncho over my head and started to lace up my boots.
     "Where are you going?"
     I hesitated, embarrassed. "The branch is falling over."
     "Wait until it dries up," she said, "or it will just fall over again. Maybe you can find something a little more fitting. A memorial, instead of just a grave marker."
     She was right, my stick was pretty shabby. "What about transplanting a sapling from the woods next to where I found him?"
     "Isn't that a residential neighborhood? You just want to traipse through there with a tree?"
     "People walk that path all the time. I don't think anyone would even notice."
     "People may walk through there all the time, but not running away with part of the forest. I think we'd look awfully conspicuous."
     "We'd be like eco-rebels, reclaiming a piece of the wild in the name of a dying species."
     "I guess it would be kind of a fitting tribute, but only if it survived the uprooting. You'd have to get something hardy, I think. Maybe a maple or something."
     "It might make his final resting spot feel a little more like home."
     "Yeah, but which home? The one before the development was built, or the one after?"
End