Pippin is getting ready.
He no longer digs little holes all over the yard.
There’s only one hole now.
Well, actually, there’s two. The one over between the daylilies and raspberries is obviously a decoy. He was watching The Great Escape with us, so there’s an even chance that there’s a third somewhere.
But there is no longer an endless No Man’s Land of mini-craters throughout the garden and lawn.
He has been focusing his efforts.
He’s not hunting.
He’s not looking for moles.
For several weeks now, he’s been putting nearly all of his subterranean efforts into that one, single bunker.
And I know what’s behind it. We’ve been letting him watch too much news on the TV… and he’s getting ready for the invasion of the Trumpsters.
It doesn’t take a clever lad like Pippin to figure it out. Anyone can see that it’s inevitable.
It’s not yet clear whether the final assault will be a full-on invasion from the south, or if it will be a fifth column effort led by Andrew Scheer, following on his lieutenant Doug Ford’s successful landing in Ontario.
Either way, Pippin is getting ready to hunker down and wait out the storm.
He’s chosen a strategic corner of the garden, well-hidden behind the greenhouse, in the crook of the grape arbour, shaded by the clematis. He has trenched an entrance to the bunker that runs along an irrigation line, so when the going gets really tough, he can tap into the exposed hose for a ready water source.
He’s really thought it through: that hose continues past the clematis and into some of his and Sam’s favourite garden produce: the cucumber and squash patches. I’ve suspected for some time that he’s been stocking his bunker with gravy bones and other treats that he happily accepts – but never eats in front of us – and I’m sure that, if push comes to shove, he expects to supplement his pantry with fresh cucurbits.
While the daylily decoy is an impressive excavation, the grape arbour bunker nearly qualifies as a megaproject.
We haven’t been dissuading him.
Indeed, we have been encouraging him – and not just because the lawn no longer looks like a First World War battlefield.
We are hoping that, when Trump marches into Canada, Pippin’s bunker will be big and deep enough to accommodate us all.