This short story is dedicated to Mr.Ed a champion for enviromental awareness but not less the guardian of all creatures that we, off hand, see disappearing around us.
This story is of the good humor kind, because Nature's Fauna has its moments only for us to be amused with...

These days of neighborly unveiled envy, if one go and buy himself a six foot trampoline you can count on his side neighbors to buy a ten foot one and the other will go all the way to buy a fifteen foot one, capable of bouncing any heavyweight mamma up to scratch the moon.

Well, ain’t buy me none, but my neighbor Willard, the one on my right side, brats nagged him to death to get them one and after a while he caved in and there it was, on his backyard, just waiting for the party to start, in all its glory and fifteen foot across kind of rubbery fry pan on legs; waiting, as it should, all the boys and girls of the neighborhood and then some, that got wind about the big jumping heaven and were getting ready for the next day grand opening.

Willard’s own right side neighbor, Jeremiah, wasn’t pleased with Willard’s acquisition which was eight footer wider that his measly seven that looked more a coffee table than a trampoline when one compared one against the other.
As a matter of security, Willard had firmly anchored the contraption away from the house walls, which he was busy giving a new fresh coat of paint and safe enough from the lines where mother was hanging the washing.

We have a wide back porch, I am not very fond of people that go by, trying to look inside your tepee, they can go to… see their own tepee if they anytime get one! Well in that back porch I have a rocking chair, a cooler full of Coors and a bag of those crispy bacon chips that you can’t stop putting in your mouth, it is like the thumb not getting out of the mouth of a toddler.
I need no radio or TV; sitting on the back porch in this neighborhood gives you plenty of entertainment see? Married cousins, vermin coming out the woods, a deputy Sheriff that stutters and is hapless to calm down domestic disputes, a war between half a dozen Sound-Blasters all playing different tunes at full volume, people screaming at each other from as apart as they can…not everything at the same time…but it happened once or twice that way.
Me? They don’t mess with me, I got me an old-faithful from the old-country that can be loaded with anything you please, you even don’t need to aim, can be blind as a bat and your shot would clean all the attacking injuns in front, the sides and one or two from the back if you are sharp enough and duck on time.
When that mother go…it echoes from hill to hill like one of Satan’s farting.

I don’t know why I was thinking about lilies that afternoon as I was looking at my neighbor, precariously perched on a ladder, trying to reach, far too away from him, a tricky corner to paint, instead of moving the ladder more near.
Willard’s dog was taking it easy by sleepin’ against the wall, besides the ladder.
As it was, the stage was set for an unforgettable entertainment.

I was rocking my chair to shake a little the cool Coors going down the pipe, peacefully contemplating the neighborly landscape.
Willard painting the house, his wife hanging the whites away from the colors, the dog sleepin’, all the brats somewhere else, far I thought, because we didn’t hear a pip from them, a weak cool breeze now and then whispering by to make you no wish to abandon your shadow….

…when a neighbor’s cat (orange will you believe?) decided that enough was enough after being bullied, beat up and chased by a mean black cat that even tried to intimidate small dogs and wasn’t strange to launch a paw with claws at little children running by.

The orange cat, minding its own business was just by the line of trees on the far side of Willard’s property, when I saw the black cat trying to sneak upon the orange cat by going along the picked fence as low as its tummy let him.
The orange cat most had been on radar mode, because it suddenly pricked up its ears and was ready like a gray-hound to chase the wabbit.
The black cat came up in full, ready to start the chase as soon as the orange took off in panic.
But wonders of wonders, letting go an enraged banshee scream, the orange cant charge like a runaway train.
The black cat waited to the very last moment expecting the other to vault to the side escaping from him, but it most had seen something in the other’s eyes, like a big neon flashing sign saying, “I’m so pissed off that I don’t care who gets hurt yousonofabitch!!!”
That, or something else, convinced the black cat that then and there was the time to haul ass because that crazy dude was gonna hurt both.
The black cat was around and running in a nanosecond hearing like from steel jaws the sound as the orange cat missed the tip of its tail by a whisker.
Like a black and orange line, so fast they were, they ran towards the front of the house, up the apple tree and on the roof of Willard’s house.
I saw the black cat appearing first, full speed over the top, with only one thing in its mind, to get the freakin’ hell from there.
Going down the sloped down shingles at that speed wasn’t going to let him to stop in time…and off it went, to its surprise, not to the cozy thick grass below but towards a black, round, strange, menacing like a monster open mouth with shining metal teeth all around.
He tried oh he tried! To stop in midair, but he was falling too fast with the orange cat as surprised as itself like a rocket just behind.
Big cat, very heavy cat, just landing on a trampoline when the orange one hit the platform just besides, helping the black cat-apulting take-off.

I saw the black cat stretched in midair like a dark, furry spider doing an elegant arch backwards towards the newly painted wall, which he missed by an inch landing on the big sleepin’ dog which jumped like having received a zillion volts where it pained most with an horrified high pitched growl that stopped the orange cat on its tracks bouncing on the trampoline like and undecided ping-pong ball.
The black cat by now, was trying to disentangle itself from the snarling dog, taking off under the ladder and to hell if it brings bad luck.
Following, the dog wasn’t that lucky, big, clumsy and not yet totally awaked, he charged after the cat don’t giving a though to the precariously perched ladder on his way, which his massive body just pushed aside as he went, howling unmentionables (here) of what will be doing once I catch you, promises.

Like slow motion, as cat and dog disappeared round the house’s far corner, I saw Willard which at last had reached the forsaken corner, trying to maintain his balance by:
a) Trying to grab the ladder with the hand holding the painting brush.
b) Lifting the arm holding the paint box, suddenly, very high, losing its grip and launching it, backward, slowly rotating, spewing rust-red paint in a rainbow fashion towards the newly washed, almost finished hanging line of clothes.
As the ladder was too near of the wall, when Willard lost his balance it wasn’t anywhere but away and down to go.
So, he went, landing almost over the orange cat that was bounced away and gratefully took off in the direction of the Mexican border, as Willard’s wife was kind of a 911 call screaming in terror, thinking that the red thing on her and the clothes was blood.
Then, she saw the empty paint box just about and Willard’s hand holding the brush totally disoriented about everything trying to sit in the middle of the trampoline, when his wife, relieved that it wasn’t blood…was immediately enraged because it was paint, and it had ruined her washing.
I never thought that a so heavy woman could jump over a trampoline from a standing still position, but she did it, trying to reach the hapless Willard to kiss him or more likely to strangle him.
Our stuttering Deputy Sheriff surely could sort that one out.
I took a couple of Coors swigs as Willard and his wife bounced on that big trampoline, being heavier than him every time she hit the canvas Willard, just going over the side was pulled back into the black hole.
Looking at them, I don’t know why it made me think about bouncing lilies.