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Where We Left Off:

The Mantid cocoons were accidentally ripped out with the weeding chore by The Grumpy Old Man. However, a new baby mantis was discovered.

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Quicksand:

Gus and Oliver don’t realize how lucky they are to have avoided the trauma of watching the quicksand scene in The Never-ending Story. I do recall the Belcher kids having a quicksand experience in Bob’s Burgers which is one of our regular repeat shows to watch. *cough clears throat* In my day, we frequently saw our favorite superhero friends and Jonny Quest confronted with quicksand situations. I never expected to need to know more about quicksand than the traumatic storylines of the 1980s.

As The Cook is wont to say, the weather is too extreme. (Gee, I wonder why?) She’ll say things like, “It’s never normal! It never just snows or rains. If there’s wind, it knocks down trees! It’s never just a cool breeze anymore!”

I never want to call my own elders “boomer,” but sometimes, it’s hard not to.

One night our phones blared an alarm warning about floods and such. The next day there were news reports from around the country about mudslides, landslides (what’s the difference?), and floods. People needed to abandon their cars or be rescued from inside them. Do you know what helps with erosion? Trees. If only developers weren’t in the pockets of every politician, there would be less deforestation and less erosion.

Did you know you can get trees from the Arbor Day Foundation? I’m not kidding! They ship tiny trees! Get your box at the appropriate planting time. It’s cool! I got a pussywillow from them and it lasted several years in a pot; but then I didn’t plant it in the ground and it died.

We kept waiting for the heavy rain that the forecasts said were coming. There’s that feeling you may get. It can be in your bones or your sinuses or an inkling under your skin. There’s something that tells us when rain should be coming. The rain has been strange just as The Cook said. It comes down for 5-10 minutes and stops. Maybe starts again, maybe not. That week, which was after the Canadian wildfire smoke was able to reach New Jersey, we had that on and off rain.

One night it finally poured. The torrents came and, as expected, roads flooded. Some places flooded that never had before. Other roads were turned into brown rivers. 

Here at the Winchester-Nabu estate, the trench that was dug out in order to redirect ground water, had been filled in only the day prior to this heavy rain. Even though the excavation machine had driven over the filled in area, it wasn’t as packed down as you might expect. I stepped on the dirt and it was squishy. After the rain, it was so much worse.

Areas where the trench was and nearby—like the corner of the rock wall where Gus conducts his daily stakeout—were sunken. It wasn’t as scary as a sinkhole, but I was terrified it would be.

“I think you have something else to worry about,” Oliver yelled down from the balcony. He was watching me and Gus examine the area and figure out if it was safe.

“What do you mean?” Gus replied.

Oliver stuck his head through the railing. “From here, it looks like quicksand. You better watch your step.”

I looked at the ground and stepped around the sundial which had fallen over from the earthly disturbance. “I thought you couldn’t tell when you were stepping on quicksand until it’s too late. Ollie, doesn’t quicksand look like normal sand?”

He might have called me a stupid human, but there was some kind of mumble before he spoke up. “It is normal sand or even soil. It so saturated with water that it can’t support weight. Gus might be fat for his size, but it’s you that should be extra careful down there.”

I get it. I weigh a lot more than a cat. More than two fat cats who are supposed to be on diets.

Gus was able to step on rocks and snake his way around until he got right next to the rock fortress. His leash threaded around the rocks and a steel post. Pietro Maximunk was up on the rock wall getting peanuts and watching us with intensity.

I felt my boots sink a little as I turned my focus to throwing peanuts to the blue jays. I’ve always found it interesting that a forensic scientist can tell how much someone weighs based on their footprints. They take into account the condition of the ground and if there are any unusual anomalies about the prints. Depending on the shoe worn, a good analyst can tell, for example, if someone is wearing shoes that don’t fit properly which someone might do trying to frame someone else or at least remove themselves from the suspect list. I’m curious what my boot prints show about their condition. I’m hard on my boots. They’re sturdy Timberlands and have holes. Once when hiking, one layer of the rubber covering of the sole came off which made walking even harder for me.

Gus was busy staring. I was busy throwing peanuts. It was alarming when Oliver yelled as loud as possible!

“Human! Get out!”

Ollie scared the hell out of me. When I went to turn and look to see what was wrong with him, that’s when I realized my feet were stuck! Soon, even more was stuck. I was sinking past my ankles. I couldn’t even pull my feet out of my boots because not only do I double-knot my laces, I cover my boots and pants with gaiters. That meant I had rubber stirrups attached to them which secured my boots to me. I was holding my birdseed can by its handle and my parasol in one hand; in the other, my expensive camera; across my body and over my head, my adventure bag; and over one shoulder, my camera bag. I was weighted down and sinking.

“Gus!” Ollie yelled from his higher observation point. “Get your human!”

My best friend leapt into action! He ran around the obstacles where his leash had been resting to unwind himself. He ran to the edge of the quicksand and jumped over the sinking hole. I let go of my parasol and grabbed the hand loop of his leash as it passed through the air. Gus jumped back over to the flowerbed and walked around the steel post that had been used to hold up a small magnolia tree in the past.

I was almost completely covered. My right hand was trying to stay up and keep the camera from getting buried. That’s how my brain was working—more worried about a replaceable machine than myself. What’s even weirder is that my index finger was on the shutter button and triggered a couple unexpected photos of aimed at the sky capturing a Great Blue Heron.

Gus used his leash like a pulley around that post. He tapped into some supernatural strength and pulled his way through the dirt. When I was able to turn my head and look, I swear Gus was the size of a mountain lion! He looked like an actual black panther—which is really either a jaguar or leopard with lots of melanin.

Had my best friend, Burton Guster Nabu, just pulled some kind of Cringer to Battlecat transformation?

As soon as I felt my right arm brace against ground that wasn’t sinking, I let go of the camera. I grasped at the dirt feeling my fingertips burn like I was raking them against sandpaper. Somehow, my left arm did not dislocate from my shoulder as Gus pulled me like a plow.

“Just a little more, Guster!” Ollie yelled.

About ten more inches of being dragged and I was able to get a knee up on more solid dirt. I was out. I couldn’t believe any of it. Not sinking into the mud. Not flailing for my life. Not the genius of two cat detectives. Not the huge panther who saved my life.

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Summary:

When repairs had to be done because water was seeping into the house, no one expected the backyard to develop quicksand. What looked like a small section of sunken dirt ended up being quicksand! Ollie quickly warned his partner, Gus. There was enough time for Gus to save the life of his human, Amber the biographer.

Case Status: Closed