Cabriolando

I've always liked the Spanish verb "cabriolar." Taken literally, it means to frolic around like a baby goat. Since my sister Malia spent years -- inexplicably -- raising goats, I've seen them, and they deserve a specific word for what they do.

But gophers -- gophers who are cabriolando are taking a great risk. They enrage me enough by eating all the precious Easter-egg flower babies that I've been waiting so impatiently for. (Easter eggs because I scattered mysterious seeds into the wind, and have no idea what will come up, or where)

Watching the seedlings appear, watching them take enough shape to be distinct from each other, cheering at each inch they gain... this has been the best part of my current life. And then that butthead comes and systematically devastates great swaths of them. Everything else shares -- the aphids, the slugs and snails, even the cutworms. But no, not the gopher. It's Scorched Earth Policy.

Then, then, he dances around and gloats!! Yes, he does, I swear. Shouting "nyah nyah!" in gopherese.