Gravel. What is it? Most people drive over it without a second thought, but I am not most people. I am a journalist, and it is my solemn duty to investigate what others take for granted. You’re welcome, Moose County.
Gravel is small rocks. It covers driveways. It makes a crunching sound. Why does it crunch? No one seems to ask this question, which is exactly the kind of intellectual complacency I have come to expect from Pickax, a town where three people were murdered last month and no one batted an eye. But I digress.
Yesterday morning, Koko sat on the windowsill and stared at the gravel driveway for exactly forty-seven minutes. Yum Yum joined him for twelve of those minutes before knocking a pen off my desk, which I interpreted as a comment on the mineral composition of aggregate stone. Koko then said “YOW” in a tone that was unmistakably analytical. My moustache tingled. When my moustache tingles, I pay attention. The last time it tingled, the old Dimsdale farmhouse burned down and a body was found in the ashes. Coincidentally, I had visited that farmhouse the previous afternoon, but that is neither here nor there.
Is gravel expensive? I can tell you that the Klingenschoen Fund recently allocated $4.2 million to resurface several county roads, a perfectly reasonable use of philanthropic resources that also happens to improve the quarter-mile approach to my barn. The accountants assure me this is tax-deductible as a public works contribution. Who am I to argue with accountants?
Speaking of expenses, the squirrels have been stealing the gravel from my walkway, presumably to line their nests. I have asked Lori Bamba to look into squirrel-deterrent invoicing. Meanwhile, a neighbor offered to share a load of crushed limestone, but I noticed him lingering near Yum Yum’s window, and I do not trust people who linger. What are they looking at? Why are they really here?
Koko sneezed twice this morning. Twice. I believe he is telling me something about drainage patterns, or possibly about the unsolved disappearance of the Goodwinter cousin last April. My moustache agrees.
Gravel.
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