Resurrections are Old News

Longtime Kennel Club readers may remember the saga of Raunchy, the tale of a robot vacuum that began with a crisis of faith and ended with a miracle. If you need a memory refresh, the tale is below.

The Resurrection of Raunchy (or Suck It Up, Baby)

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August 6, 2024

Five years ago I experienced a crisis of faith. I contacted the priest at the church I attended, and we arranged to meet at my house. Having recently had wrist surgery, I’d felt cooped up and decided to go for a long dog walk before ze were to arrive. I had plenty of time to spare. But lo and behold, when I rounded the corner of our block twenty minutes…

Raunchy the robot vacuum has been a diligent, working member of our household for nearly five years and despite a few sick days here and there, due mainly to hair entanglements, does not complain. Raunchy cruises through the house picking up stray hairs (so much hair!), dog fur and bits of wood from the woodstove in the winter, and loose leaves or grass traipsed in from the yard in the summer.

I have calendar reminders on my phone – “Run Raunchy” – that pop up every other day and startle friends. When I see my reminder, I put Poppy outside (she and Raunchy don’t get along, though it’s not Raunchy’s fault – he’s just doing his job), and I use my phone to start Raunchy’s vacuum cycle.

But one week ago, Raunchy refused move. I clean Raunchy regularly, so I checked the usual trouble spots – wheel castors clogged with hair, dust bin full, the occasional wood chip blocking the vacuum. Nothing worked. Raunch alerted and announced he’d be starting, but he didn’t move. Just sat on the charging station with his white light flashing.

I tried a manual start, but despite giving me the “I’m cleaning” sound, he remained in one place and didn’t budge. Maybe he needed a break. I left him for a day and came back the next to try. Same thing. No cleaning.

I repeated this cycle for the next four days, knowing that nothing would change but determined to try the only thing I knew – obstinance and persistence. It often does work. But Raunchy needed more.

“Raunchy’s sick,” I told the hub that evening. “He’s refusing to work.”

“Maybe he need a hard reset.” The hub’s an IT guy who lives by the “turn-it-off then turn-it-on again” ethos.

“I’ve given him four days off,” I answered. “What more could he need?”

The hub stared at me.

Daily maintenance is my foray, but the last time Raunchy stopped working, the hub fixed him. I waded through the dog hair wafting across our floor, picked up Raunchy from the charging station then handed him to the hub.

“Well then it’s your turn, smartie pants.” I said. “Fix him, fixer man.” I commanded.

Again, the hub stared.

“Mr. Fixer Man,” I added. Then, “please.”

He softened but grumbled as he took Raunchy to the coffee table where he opened up Raunchy’s insides. Lo and behold a mass of hair surrounded Raunchy’s motor and other moving parts, so the hub cleaned him out and put him back together. Then he gave Raunchy a reboot and started him back up.

Nothing happened. Raunchy remained silent and unmoving.

“He used to make noise,” I complained. “You’ve silenced Raunchy! And not only that, but he still isn’t moving!”

The hub stopped kneeling over Raunchy to straighten and stare at me again. It was becoming a bad habit, and I didn’t like the disgruntled look in his eyes.

“Why are you looking at me? Raunchy is in trouble.” I left him and busied myself in the kitchen, though we’d already eaten and everything had been put away.

The hub sighed and reconnected Raunchy to our Wi-Fi while I polished the previously-cleaned countertops to a sparkle.

“Okay, let’s hope this works.” He stepped away and fiddled with the iRobot app on my phone.

Nothing. No movement. No sound.

“You killed him,” I moaned. “Raunchy is dead, and you did it.”

The hub frowned at me while I put my head in my hands. .

What to do now? If left to the hub, we’d likely be wading through dog hair up to our knees to reach the coffee every morning. It was all up to me.

I nearly wept but instead sighed. “Okay. Let’s think.”

What would get Raunchy moving?

A jumpstart?

I didn’t have long to ponder. Before I could speak, Raunchy beeped and gave his triumphant “I’m about to clean” sound. I swung my head over to Raunchy’s home corner, and he backed up and out of his stall for the first time in five days.

As the second resurrection Raunchy became clear, tears of despair became tears of joy. I hugged the hub and danced a victory dance. Poppy barked a warning, as she does anytime the hub and I touch each other, and our house filled with the sounds of laughter and righteous dog anger.

A pure victory over household evil, another dust devil vanquished, Raunchy has lived for yet another tale.

Given that Raunchy’s origins are entirely related to my loss of faith (as noted in the link at the beginning of this post), I’m revisiting the Nativity figures from the story of this journey of loss.

For starters, I distributed the Nativity figures, a set that had been my mom’s and given to me after her death, throughout the yard. I had no need for the religious icons inside the house but didn’t want to completely get rid of them. I set Mary and the baby inside the chicken coop with the shepherd and the donkey, put Joseph in the woodshed, and placed the kings underneath each of the three grapevines that line the chicken yard fence.

Deconsecration

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November 21, 2023

Three years ago, I needed to re-home the nativity set that my sister gave me. But rather than giving away the eight ceramic figurines (chipped and broken after years of use), I found new homes for them in strategic places throughout our half acre backyard.

Throughout several years of chicken scratching and stall-mucking, the Nativity figures have moved around the yard. Two years after they’d been placed, Mary had vanished, Joseph had not been seen in months, and the baby Jesus and his cradle had emerged in a different location entirely.

They blended into their new surroundings, and I blithely forgot about them until this spring when the donkey appeared in the compost pile in my garden.

“Donkey!” I cried. “How did you get here?”

I didn’t expect a response and can only assume a shovel or a pail carried the donkey from the coop to the compost pile. When it happened, however, is anyone’s guess.

I’d originally left the donkey and shepherd together. And I’d last seen the shepherd ass-up, head-down in a mouse hole, as if one of the mice had wanted a nice man-statue for their den and had dragged it as far as it’d fit. But I hadn’t seen the donkey in a while, and its reemergence with the slugs and earthworms pleased me.

Discovering the donkey prompted me to search for the rest of the Nativity crew. I found Mary hovering like an angel from the chicken wire ceiling inside the coop. The shepherd lay below her, buried up to his neck near the mouse hole. Jesus’ cradle, upside down and outside the coop door in the chicken yard, was empty. He has not yet been found, though I expect he’s buried deep beneath the cradle, sunk in mud, a casualty of a water pipe that froze and burst during the deep freeze of 2024. When, and if it ever happens, I hope I’m around to see his next rebirth.

The kings, those lushes, have not moved from the soil beneath the grapevines, though one has lost an arm. All three have been slowly disintegrating, losing their features and their regal robes, becoming faceless and status-less. Turns out, in death we are all the same.

And what of Joseph, whom I’d placed on the woodpile so long ago? He’s apparently been hanging out behind the wood, between a fading sheet of red plywood and the wire fence, exposed to weather and the odd glance of neighbors walking the grassy footpath between properties.

As with the others, I left him where I found him. He’s in the best shape of all, despite his year-round exposure to the elements. Unlike Mary and the others, he’s not covered in chicken shit, dirt or mouse poop, though cobwebs are likely in all cases.

These icons will eventually dissolve throughout my living, breathing, clucking yard. Or they’ll be carted off in a dump load one day and trashed by a new homeowner who wonders what these misshapen figures once represented.

What do they represent?

Obviously symbols of faith. But also, dissolution. Symbols of family, and fissures. Trials. And transformations.

Amidst the chicken poop, mouse holes and spiderwebs, these figures have new lives, in a sense, solo adventures as lawn and garden ornaments, as chicken overseers (Mary) and fenceline sentries (Joseph).

New adventures give us new stories, which is what I’m all about. So the figures remain. Time to sit back and wait for new miracles.