My sister Mary retired recently.

Cue the language-nerd digression: “retire” has no common ancestor with “tired”; rather, it means to “pull back from.” So retired people are not necessarily exhausted. The Spanish word for retirement is “jubilar,” which shares a cognate with the English word “jubilation.” Thus, we can say that Mary has pulled back from her job, and she is as happy as a pig in slop about it. 

Anyhoo. Mary has retired, and one of her leisure time projects is to plant watermelons. From what I have heard, she has one plant that has been puffing along all summer, doing its very best to produce a viable watermelon. She has learned that watermelons have male and female flowers, and after the male flowers die off, the lady flowers will develop little round pregnant tummies underneath their petals. Soon, if all goes as planned, these little tummies will develop into actual watermelons!

But, I probably wouldn’t be writing this story if all had gone as planned. Mary tells me there have been three watermelons so far. The first one was eaten by something with big teeth. A groundhog, maybe, or one of the neighborhood vampires (another story altogether), or maybe a squirrel, or even a vampire squirrel.  

After Mary had sufficiently mourned the first watermelon, she discovered a second one. She placed chunks of Irish Spring soap around the perimeter, having heard that the smell would deter the woodland creatures. This watermelon grew to about the size of a softball before being forcibly separated from its vine in the middle of the night and abandoned partially eaten in a corner of the yard. Mary cut it open and found that it had only just been starting to ripen. Maybe that’s why the interloper took one nibble and left it alone.

After each one of these stories, I encouraged Mary to use this as a learning process, and even if she didn’t get any watermelons this year, she could use what she has learned from this experience to be more successful next year.

And then, lo and behold, a third watermelon showed up. Third time’s the charm? Mary told me that she had been reading more about growing watermelons, and had been advised by one source to wrap the watermelon in a towel overnight to keep the beasties at bay. This she did, and when she went back the next day, she found the towel removed and dropped in the same place as the second watermelon had been left, while the newest watermelon remained untouched. We spent a few moments trying to imagine what might have been going on in that groundhog’s head.

Anyway, at out last conversation, Mary had wrapped her one remaining watermelon in a towel, placed a bucket over it, and put a large rock on top of the bucket. Returning the following morning, she found the site undisturbed. We figure the groundhog (or vampire woodchuck, or whatever) has temporarily retired, and is gleefully plotting his next move.