I was alone at home, working on my novel on my laptop, when I heard a strange clucking noise. As I don’t live on a farm nor do any of my neighbors keep chickens, I was immediately intrigued. I went outside. Sitting in the road was some sort of game bird.
Around this time, a couple of my neighbors came out, because they could hear the strange clucking, too. After a quick conference, we determined this bird had either lost its way from the wilderness behind our quiet neighborhood, or it was someone’s pet that had escaped.
We decided to capture it.
We cornered it up against one of my neighbor’s houses and enclosed it with some chicken wire fencing. The bird took one shot straight up in the air, sailed over our heads, and landed safely out of reach. Hmm.
Meanwhile, another neighbor had done some calling and found out that a local farm had lost a bird –a guinea hen. The farmer asked us to please keep it safe until he arrived.
Keeping it safe meant eleven adults chasing this bird around our neighborhood. We tried several different methods: trapping it under a rhododendron bush, forming a circle around it, throwing a net upon it. No such luck. The guinea hen was two steps ahead of us the entire time. And because it could fly straight up, then over our heads, we were useless.
Finally, the owners of the guinea hen arrived, and now thirteen to one, it should be a breeze to get this thing. I couldn’t wait. My novel was waiting for me…
We managed to back it up into somebody’s garage. A quick request to close the door was issued, and granted. The guinea hen clucked in alarm at the sudden noise of the garage door closing. It made a dash up into the air, its wings smacking paint cans and ladders and ropes. It tried to make a get-away. The farmer hip-checked his guinea hen into the wall of the garage. The bird, dazed, fluttered to the cement floor. The farmer swiftly gathered the bird into his arms, and all was well again.
We bid each other goodbye, and I headed back to my quiet house, to my novel.
The screen on my laptop was dark.
Ominously dark.
I frowned and slowly pressed a key. Nothing happened. I checked the outlet. It was still plugged in. Tried a different key, you know, in case the other one was having an off moment. Still, nothing. Then I noticed the keyboard was kind of gloppy looking. I gazed steadily at it, fearing, fearing, fearing…
I unplugged the laptop and lifted it up. Something oozed out of it. A thick, clear substance that dripped to the floor. Oh God. I turned the laptop upside down. The thick, clear substance poured now. It poured out of my laptop, making a slimy puddle on the floor.
It all came together so very fast for me, especially when I noticed lots of the same thick, slimy liquid on my windowsill, saturating the arm of my couch.
My dog, Fryar, an english setter, a bird dog, had been watching the entire bird-chasing from my window. He had jumped onto my couch and drooled all over my windowsill, my couch, and my laptop. It must have shorted out after it had been subjected to enough drool. The entire computer sizzled and died, along with the latest draft of my novel—which I had neglected to back up!
Needless to say, I was a wreck for weeks. From that dreadful day on, I have been very careful about backing up my writing.
Does anyone have a story to tell about when you lost your writing?
Limebird Writers 