We have an ancient evil lurking in our backyard…one that we are desperately trying to rid ourselves of. You may remember it. Recently the husband attempted to forcibly evict it, when he fell from a ladder and landed on his head. Today, after some understandable wariness, he was back at it. The enemy has already been felled, and now needs to be dismembered and disposed of. But evil strikes again. This afternoon, after the husband had been working at this arduous task for some time, we heard cries for help. I was in the house, he was outside. We both ran to the little man, who had been playing on his jungle gym. It has a platform to climb up on, to get to the top of the slide. Somehow he had slipped under the safety bar at one side of the platform, and was hanging there, by his poor little head, which was thoroughly stuck. The husband got to him first, but brought him to me for some comforting. The monkey was pretty shaken up, but seemed relatively unharmed. Another coincidence? You be the judge. After a brief breather the husband returned to his work. He dug himself into a hole, trying to rip out the roots of this evil. He’s advanced some, and in the last couple of hours he’s made some discoveries. A shard of pottery, a metal lightswitch faceplate, a paintbrush, chunks of concrete and large rocks. And in its trunk are marks suggesting that others before him had tried, and failed, to extricate this entrenched enemy. It had even, cleverly, hidden some large metal staples in its base, to repel attacks by chainsaw. Even with these setbacks, I believe the husband will triumph. But the little man and I will just observe from a safe distance.