For most of Saturday morning, my lovely wife and our Goldendoodle, Watson, kept hearing a mysterious CLUNK somewhere in the house. She told me it sounded like the noise a washing machine makes when it first starts its wash cycle.
Watson was apparently unable to narrow down the suspect list.
Later, Jackie was heading downstairs to flip the laundry when she heard it again. She followed the sound into our basement bedroom, looked into the recessed window well, and discovered a scene that looked as though Noah had seriously underestimated his passenger count.
There was a baby rabbit trapped down there, along with roughly 30 frogs.
I climbed into the window well, caught the rabbit, and released it into the yard. Then I spent the next several minutes catching frogs one at a time and setting them free, too.
Nobody applauded, the frogs offered no statement, and the rabbit didn't even look back, but my lovely wife cheered me on through the window.
The whole scene made me think of an odd variation of West Side Story. Leaving them trapped, however, never crossed my mind.
It reminded me of something I've always admired about good hunters.
Wisconsin gun deer season fills our woods with enough blaze orange to make a small country nervous. Hunters spend months preparing for those nine days. We scout, we check our guns, and we scout trails.
I remember freezing so hard while sitting in a tree stand at -13 ºF, shivering so hard the tree shook as though a Sasquatch had its hands around the trunk. I'd be set in my stand long before sunrise, because somewhere out there is the buck I've been waiting years to see.
Yet if an ethical hunter comes across a deer tangled in a fence or trapped between trees, the hunt instantly changes.
The rifle stays down.
Guys who had been hoping to bring that deer home suddenly start figuring out how to get it home safely to the woods instead. Another hunter comes over; somebody grabs a rope, and somebody finds wire cutters and spends an hour freeing an animal they would've legally shot under entirely different circumstances.
Why?
Because helpless isn't fair.
I think children learn things like that long before we realize we're teaching them.
Years ago, I was driving my two oldest daughters to the public pool in Eau Claire. I was about to turn onto Highway 12 when I spotted a large turtle in danger of being hit.
I immediately stopped.
There were cars behind me, but thankfully everybody was paying attention. I jumped out, grabbed the turtle, carried it off the roadway, and deposited it safely in the grass.
My daughters were stunned by how quickly Dad had moved. The drivers behind us waited, watched, and gave me a thumbs-up.
I wasn't trying to demonstrate anything. There was a turtle in the road, so I moved the turtle.
Last summer, my middle daughter came across another turtle on a county road. She stopped her vehicle and prepared to do what she'd watched her father do years earlier.
There was one unfortunate difference: mine was harmless; hers was a large snapping turtle.
She darn near lost a finger, introduced the turtle to several colorful metaphors, and wisely decided nature could handle the rest of the situation without her assistance.
Dad apparently forgot to include species identification in the lesson plan.
My daughters learned something else from me, although perhaps not something any parenting book would recommend.
One winter evening I was driving them to CCD. I turned a corner and suddenly saw a NAPA delivery truck parked on the wrong side of the road with its headlights pointed directly at us.
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For one split second, it looked as if an enormous truck was bearing down on us. So naturally, I screamed.
Not a dignified yell, not a calm warning, I gave them full theatrical terror. Of course, both girls shrieked.
Then I started laughing.
I laughed so hard I had to pull over because I could no longer safely operate the vehicle. My daughters were somewhere between fury, relief, and plotting my timely death.
It remains one of my favorite memories.
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Years later, both girls have told me about moments when they did something, said something, or reacted a certain way and suddenly understood where it came from. One of them has heard from her husband more than once, "It's obvious you're your father's daughter."
There aren't many sentences a dad can hear that mean more.
Parents spend enormous amounts of time wondering whether we're teaching our children enough. We worry about school, manners, work ethic, faith, compassion, judgment, money, relationships, and a thousand things we think require a formal conversation around the kitchen table.
Meanwhile, they're watching us move turtles. They're watching whether we help something helpless. They're remembering whether Dad could laugh at life and at himself.
Most of the lessons that last probably weren't lessons at all when they happened. They were just moments.
A rabbit in a window well, a turtle crossing Highway 12, a delivery truck with unfortunately positioned headlights, and 30 frogs waiting for somebody much larger than they were to decide what happened next.
My daughters are adults now. They have lives, families, responsibilities, and stories of their own. Every once in a while, though, they'll do something and recognize a piece of their father in it.
If those pieces include stopping for something helpless, trying to be fair, and laughing hard enough that occasionally you have to pull the car over, I'll take it.
Life is too short not to save the turtle.
And it's far too short not to laugh afterward.
