Golf Ball

The back of my house is outlined by a fairly dense forest —one that provides a nice home for lots of animals, including bears, bobcats, fox, rabbits, snakes and apparently at least in the past, the occasional mountain lion.  Oh yes, and several million squirrels who consider my house a nice place to show off their climbing skills and intimidate my old cat, knowing he is way to slow to chase them.  So, as you can imagine, it’s a very private area in back of my house and maybe only one neighbor can see small portions of it if they really get nosey enough. So actually, I can wear whatever I want back there, or don’t want, um, you know, even on my back deck facing the quiet but wild wilderness.

Some years ago, I purchased a golf-hitting net, or back stop, and I made it my small golf driving range, to practice my cranky swing on some occasions when bored.  Although at this point the details are fuzzy, I found myself tired of hitting the little white balls into the back stop —not able to admire the soaring beauty of their majestic flight through the air, so I decided to let one go.  And I mean, I hit it with a driver as hard as I could, back stop removed, way out into the wild woods somewhere, knowing it would never be found again. It was probably my best drive ever, and I was probably about ten miles or more from the nearest golf course or driving range in this city.  So, it was a lonely little golf ball landing somewhere deep in the wild forest behind my home.

Today, I woke up and looked out onto my private deck outside my desk and saw a strange white object staring at me, in the middle, near my deck chairs, cushions removed for the winter.  It looked like a golf ball.  I wiped my blurry eyes, took a couple more sips of that soothing warm Java, and looked out again.  It was a white golf ball, a Top Flight XL 1, in fact, staring at me as if to say, here I am sir. Now, you need to figure out how I got up here on your deck!” So, I stared at this tricky surprise for a while and he stared at me too, immobile, and mocking me, it seems. Now I don’t remember if I hit a Top Flight XL1 back then, so I have no proof it was my ball.

So, I finished my coffee, then went back to the conundrum that now presented itself on my private back deck. I had to use some logic really quick and sometimes in the early morning, that’s tough for me. Let’s see.  Since I do not live on a golf course, and to my knowledge, golf balls do not have a mind of their own, or the ability to jump up twenty feet onto my private deck and then just sit and stare at me and taunt me, there must be a better explanation to what event occurred here.  Now, frankly, I have had large owls sit on my roof top and stare at my deck before, so I could imagine their large talons could grab the ball, thinking it is a new food source I suppose, then as they fly to my house, just drop it onto my deck.  Nah. Owls know real food when they see it. Or perhaps those pesky squirrels, went on a forest scavenger hunt for super large nuts and acorns and found the holy grail:  a huge white mutant acorn!  And since they consider my house their playground, they brought the big white round nut and dropped on my deck to play with.  I do know the wind becomes fairly fierce out here, especially at night, and a strong wind burst could have blown that Top Flight XL into the air and it bounced off my house and landed on my deck.  Yeah, I suppose, but doesn’t seem likely, I mean, if that was the case why weren’t there trees and branches down all around the house, remnants of the force of the natural wind?

The only explanation is this: There is someone or something out there in the woods that knows the truth…

And I wonder if I should keep the ball, or hit it back out there again…

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