Tiny Town, USA – The rumor went like this: The keeper of the City Cemetery on University Avenue was seen walking purposefully to his shed with a human skull in his hand.
He was hailed by another man who was walking his dog in the cemetery.
"My understanding that this summer's outdoor Shakespeare performance is of MacBeth," said the dogwalker. "Why then carriest thee a skull? This is New Yorick, but alas, not a Hamlet in site."
The gatekeeper's spavined face was gray. He spoke in a sullen tone not worth repeating. The skull had been excavated by woodchucks who make nice comfy homes of graves and vaults and have done so for years and years, he said. But this time it was different. For some reason, this time, the woodchucks had to go. Violently.
Rumors then followed that the city was going to "dispatch" the woodchucks. Generally that means by firearms. It was perfect timing for a murder. Who would mistake the crackle of small arms fire in the cemetery for anything but fireworks?
A call to City Hall and to the Ithaca Police Department led nowhere. Seeking the mayor was of no avail as she was on vacation. We could not confirm the story.
But it grabbed hold the lapels of our imaginary starched shirts. If lapels might be found on shirts, starched or otherwise.
So we took a camera up at lunch time in 96 degree heat and looked for chuckholes that led to nice underground coops. What we found confirmed what is well known: Woodchucks chuck bones and whatnot out of graves to clear a space for themselves and their kinfolk.
More, we believe we have unearthed a stupendously vast and heretofore secret underground woodchuck superorganism that stretches from Grotfield to the Eastern borders of EDuCorp, that these City Cemetery woodchucks are but part of an enormous extended woodchuck society and, that they have colonized our planet in peace.
The editors at Tinytowntimes.com have grappled with the issue of nuisance wildlife eradication in the past and our shoot-from-the-hip freestyle manner did not go down well with area farmers and trigger happy Palin/Huckabee ticket types.
This time we are out to conclude some old business. We are setting traps for the trappers of woodchucks and snares and decoys for anyone armed with the intention of killing the City Cemetery woodchuck colony. Other animals keep dens in the cemetery and it is easy to see one thing leading to another and the next thing you know, frat boys looking for golf balls shanked off the lawns of Alpha Beta Blocka are being hunted and shot down.
The above slideshow also covers different aspects of the cemetery. For such a lachrymose setting, it is quite lovely. It is squalid as death and decay can be yet tranquil in large part because there are no squawking children running around making stupid sounds. It is unto a gated community for the loneliest of us all who pass a little time amongst the dead and the dull gray names and dates. Woodchucks, being egoless, leave no trace of their passing and so for them, to be considered part of the Cowley family, Father, Erasmus, wife Edwina, Adele, Pliny and Thomas, is fine with them.
In a copse of corpses among the landscaped conifers, the pines do not mourn so much as whisper stories of adventures past and there is a whiff there of 18th century mischief, balderdash and beard mites.
Oh, the names on the stones have less to say than the stones that speak a language that has no name. There are bowling balls where there should be cannon balls, because the cannon balls were stolen and had to be replaced. Anyone observing the cannons will see that the black balls on the War Memorial would never fit the barrels.
We think bowlers too, at least those who kept a decent average, deserve their place in the eternal superstructure of the afterlife.They assist the ancestors in the making of thunder.
It's a good place on a hot day and I'm sure our friend, the woodchuck, was in the cool cool confines of a deep-six flat built for more than one, as the worm turns.
– C. Penbroke Handy, mostly for the hell of it
