Part of my daily routine is heading to the garden to pick up fallen oranges and lemons and occasionally pull particularly brazen weeds within our garden beds surrounded by thigh-high plastic fencing to keep out Peter and his rabbit friends.

A week ago, when walking by one of the beds, with both feet on the ground, my legs wobbled. I stopped to marvel at how uneven the ground had become in that area thanks to gophers tunneling, desperate for access to the forbidden fruit guarded by tight metal netting beneath the dirt within the garden beds.

I happened to walk a different path through the garden two mornings ago and so didn’t remember that bad patch of earth as I hopped out over the fence, one foot after the other, as I’ve done a dozen times, though perhaps not in that particular spot, at least not since the recent rains deepened and widened those subterranean tunnels.

My first foot landed while the second was in the air; thus, all my weight went into the first as it buckled and crashed through a gopher subway. I yelped and toppled over, thinking, “Oh please don’t let that be something bad. Maybe I only sprained my ankle. That crack I heard was just the wooden stake that holds the fence breaking when I fell.

Only it wasn’t.

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