An Update on Milton

Milton hasn’t come back. And now there’s even more snow.

A few days ago, Howard decided that he should shovel a path for Milton so he could get to his usual sit spot. So he did this and slightly relocated Milton’s wall art as kind of a highway marker, like, “Yo, Milton, your sit spot is over here.”

Then Howard decided that Milton would more likely hop back if he saw that some nice straw had been strewn about for him so he yelled out to the next door neighbor who, coincidentally, was on his back porch, surveying what was, in summer, his lush urban farming backyard.

“Do you have any straw?”

“Sure.” And the neighbor, whose name is Mark, went inside his house. When he came out, he reached out his hand with five straws wrapped in a paper napkin. “Don’t worry, I used the napkin to pick them up.”

“No, not drinking straws! Hay. Do you have any hay?”

We live in an older part of Milwaukee in what is called the Water Tower neighborhood, though the water tower is some ways from here, and the houses are tall and packed together on 50′ lots. Not a lot of livestock around here and not much hay. No, neighbor Mark answered, he had no hay.

Howard explained that it was for the rabbit that had been hanging around our house and then the neighbor started to complain about a creature living under his porch – maybe it was a raccoon or a possum or a rabbit. And then, neighbor Mark described his intention to live-trap the creature and release it in a county park.

Howard was in shock. “Don’t you dare! He’s our friend and he has a name!”

And then neighbor Mark, not wanting to start something after having served a three-year sentence of the silent treatment for his role in convincing the city that our 70-year old maple should be cut down because a freak storm could make it fall on his roof, backed off his plan to live-trap the creature under his porch. And then Howard came in the house to tell me that he had shoveled a path for Milton and that neighbor Mark had straws but no hay.