A Stone Cottage in Northern Italy
It fell from the ceiling, landing with a thud on the floor next to our bed. Scurrying underneath, then scaling the stone wall and ducking behind the ancient wood beams above us, he was a blur of bushy grey fur the exact shade of a stole I once coveted from a drag queen selling couture at a vintage faire.
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Scratching, ripping, chewing noises echo through nights darker than the depths of the Ligurian Sea, its creatures just as creepy. Cinghale root through the old road to the house; spiders and insects the size of Fiat 500s skitter stone walls; deer and fox trot the land mostly unseen but for their markings; birds screech in the black night from the forest like tormented, abandoned chickens. Each sound is like those emanating from the Trump Presidency: odd, unfamiliar, terrifying.
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“That’s life in the country” was the refrain from those in the know. It was uttered as often and as casually as “Well, you know, we had Berlusconi” when talk inevitably turns to America’s global humiliation, as if the two situations were comparable, as if the defiling of the United States and its global reverberations could compare to the slight might of influence mustered by present-day Rome. It’s a silly, reductive analogy. But of course, the mere allusion to its ridiculousness smacks of American elitism. So we equivocate, nodding with smug smiles, until it dawns on Carrara that Italians may know a thing or two about waning empires.
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It was an Edible Dormouse, the only living species in the genus Glis, and found in most of Western Europe. Resembling a grey squirrel and just as agile, Romans and Gauls once considered them a delicacy, hunting them in elaborate rituals and roasting them stuffed with herbs. More recently considered an endangered species, their numbers rebounded. Big time. When told of our travails, the Italians smile and make cooing noises. Prezioso, they say. Precious, my ass. They’re now pests, but the laws regarding their welfare were never updated so they continue to breed unabated, often nesting in roofs, eating through insulation to the interior below, falling from ceilings and landing next to beds. Our bed.
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That’s life in the country.
