GRACE'S BAD HAIR DAY

This is a much younger Grace having one of those bad hair days. The men in our family always say, "Better a bad hair day with lots of hair than a bad hair day with no hair."

What to write today is the question. It's Monday in a time in my life when Mondays have become meaningless. Monday is garbage pickup day. That's something to look forward to.

Failure. That's on my mind this morning. I can't even kill a stupid gopher with my arsenal of weapons. It continues to dig up the back yard. This gopher has got to be named Mr. Illusive.

Gopher control was called yesterday. Mr. Gopher Man dug up a lot of the lawn, put what he called "pincher" traps in each tunnel he found and covered them back up.

Pincher trap is a politically correct term. Snap their little head off traps would be more accurate. Or how about "Heads Will Roll" gopher traps?

There are eight little flags sticking up around the lawn. Each flag means there's a pincher trap underneath it. Mr. Gopher Man is coming back this afternoon to count bodies. His clients are charged for every body the pincher trap traps.

I predict only one little menace to my lawn will be found. If history repeats itself, as they say it often does, Mr. Illusive will have outfoxed Mr. Gopher Man. Most likely Mr. Gopher is sitting in his Lazy Boy chair somewhere in our neighbors yard taking great delight in what Mr. Gopher Man is doing to all of his tunnel work.

This afternoon Grace will want to know what Mr. Gopher Man is doing in our yard. She's not ready for the story about death, dying and what happens to gophers when they irritate her papa. We'll keep Grace inside and just tell her that Mr. Gopher Man is fixing the lawn and let it go at that.

At four years of age, why ruin a rosy outlook on life?