Parks and Recreation - The Pack Rat

Today our parks maintenance crew member, Phil, came in to the office and he had a story to tell us about how they had removed about 1000 brush bushes from one of the park washes. He said they had been removing brush and dead dried bushes all morning, and when they came back from lunch they begun raking the rock back into place and filling the holes. He said "as if it was a cartoon, one by one little creatures appeared looking for their missing homes and shelters, it was so sad". He described the first encounter with a road runner. The road runner came bouncing through, it's long legs skipping easily over the dessert debris, and then slowed down as it stopped at the very point where a barrel cactus had been, and stared. In a very bird like way, it tilted it's head side to side and looked from Phil to the missing cactus. It came closer to inspect the situation, despite the presence of Phil, it gave Phil one last long look of disapproval and then skipped away. The second encounter a short time later, was with a bunny. Slowly, yet agile the bunny enter into the wash and twitched it nose in curiosity. And, if possible the droopy eyes become even more saddened at the loss of an apparently important piece of its' habitat. Then the last and most humorous encounter was with a pack rat, who's' hole was partly covered already. The tiny pack rat popped out, then shook its' head and twitched its' tiny paws to "dust" off the dirt. After blinking its' eyes a couple times and turning it's head side to side, it twitched again as it looked around in confusion. It put its' tiny paws on the ground and sniffed, as if to ask itself "am I in the right place?". Then it looked around again, still blinking the dirt out it's eyes. During what can only be described as the "acceptance" - the tiny pack rat popped back into a standing position and looked straight up to see there was no longer a roof over his hole. Its' little shoulders seemed to collapse and Phil swears he heard a tear drop. Ahhhhh!

So, we naturally gave Phil a hard time; joking that it is suppose to rain tomorrow and the poor little pack rats' home is going to flood; that it probably took that pack rat 2 years to collect all that crap and build a roof; that we would have to encourage the critters to apply for a "Relief Fund" to repair their homes.