“The guy who called in said his truck had been hauling a boat of some sort when he hit ice and crashed into a ditch. Hitch ripped right off, and the trailer flipped into the river or some such, as it was now gone.”

The snow dulled the regular sounds from the highway, but amplified the chickadee calls.

It was a sand pail, filled with bones! Mouse bones!

“Don’t worry, it’s not a snake”, said the man as he pulled a coiled snake out of his chest-box. I was beginning to understand his counter-realistic manner of doing things.

There was never going to be a good time to tell her that he was not actually a human.

Man, that pup was curious. There was no rabbit hole he couldn’t find and try to get to the bottom of.

The dog was ripping this way and that on the freshly-snow-covered trail.

He put on his bored shorts on the mornings where he just wanted to have breakfast and then lay in the hammock until noon. He put on his board shorts on the mornings where he had to move two by fours around.

He popped his head out the door and looked left, right, and down. A 2,000-pound, 14-inch cube of tungsten was squishing his doormat. It had a “HEAVY” sticker on it.

There were Barbie heads, torsos and limbs scattered across the living room carpet, and curiously, an uneaten bowl of Doritos.

The little rowboat had been pulled up on the beach all winter. It was full of leaves and had water up to the gunnels.

He rose up into the cavern. He arched his back to crack his ribs, while his beam scanned the ridged ceiling. Were those bats or small stalactites? He had forgotten to put contacts in that morning.

His wife left him in the fall, and the dog had been run-over the day after Christmas. This was his first birthday alone, and he was spending it rewatching random episodes of Game of Thrones while eating his way through a box of Jos Louis. It was 2pm and he’d already watched five and eaten seven.

He could see steam pouring out of the wok lid, but the food truck was otherwise empty.

With the flooding, the decking attached to the frail boat house was completely underwater and the roof was pillowed with a foot of snow. He assumed the boat inside was floating happily but there was no way to check.

She snuck into her parents’ room and ordered a pizza with no sauce and no cheese.

She looked up and locked eye contact with him. “This is your last chance to tell me, man”, she said, as she loosened her grip on the carton of organic free-range eggs.

“Don’t let them get away with that”, the keeper told her.

They were an efficient team in person, but the amount of time spent scheduling their meetings was greater than the time spent participating in the meetings.

On the topic of incorrect assumptions, the lifeless robin on the lawn outside their living room window had not hit the window. The little scamp down the road had shot it with his pellet gun and placed it there sometime in the night.