Last night, as part of our “School’s Out-We Made It” celebration, we loaded up in our car and drove to the Yorktown Battlefields, armed with a trunkful of bats and badminton rackets to attack lightening bugs with.  There are not many things that are more fun, then swinging wildly at lightening bugs and watching their lights shatter into pieces and go flying through the air.  I suppose that would qualify as “Cruelty to Animals”.  But dang, it is fun.


When we pulled off to the side of Surrender Road, the battlefield was full of at least 20-30 deer.  Keli had her camera, so she crawled out the driver side window and crept along the fence line to try to get some pictures.  We silently waited in the car so as not to spook the deer.  About halfway down the battlefield, Keli turned and looked back at the car.  I knew instantly what she was going to do.  She’s always wanted to run with the deer.  Sure enough, she took off in a dead sprint, and chased those deer clear across the field and into the woods.  So funny to watch.


We deployed then to wreck some havoc on the firefly population, but alas, within minutes of unloading our arsenal, along came a ranger who kicked us out.  What must he have thought, seeing us pulling all those bats out of the trunk??  I think Mark was already on the attack—from the road it appeared as if he was swinging at, um, nothing but air.


As we drove home, Keli discovered her cell phone was missing.  Not good.  We knew she must have dropped it during her terror filled (for the deer) romp across the battlefield.  Being good, law-abiding citizens–except I think that it may be a misdemeanor to chase the deer, hmmm—we decided we would just have to wait until the morning to find her phone.


So, at about 8:00 this morning, Keli, Bethany and I made our return visit to the fields, full of confidence that we would find the missing phone.  However, as we pulled off the road at our exact location from the night before, we saw a sight that made our hearts stop.


The battle field of last night, resplendent in it’s tall, waving grass, had been mohawked down to nothing.  The grass had been cut.  And there, back by the tree line, was the offending machine–a green John Deere Tractor pulling the largest farm mowing implement behind it.


Keli and I stared at each other, our jaws dropped.  And then, I just couldn’t help it, though I tried.  I started giggling, and then chuckling, and then laughing hysterically.  Keli’s reaction was “Mom, this is NOT funny.”  But then, she too, couldn’t help but see the hilarity of the moment.  Because, really, how often do they actually cut the dang battlefields?  Of course, it would be the morning after my girl had lost her phone.


We decided to look anyway.  I pulled myself together and tried to get serious.  Actually, I sobered up pretty quickly because I began to figure out what the actually cost was going to be, to replace her phone and I wondered how long it would take us to cover the entire battlefield, as the sun continued to rise along with the heat.  There was no way we were going to find it, and if we did, I was certain it would be in shattered blue pieces.


We had only been walking about 5 minutes, when Keli said “Let’s angle across the field, this is where I started running last night”.  As we turned to cut diagonally, it wasn’t but 2 minutes later that Keli found her phone.  No Joke.  In One Piece.  With 13 text messages and one missed call.


Obviously the tractor had passed over the phone, because there is a long scratch on the screen plus some scarring on the case.  But it still is operational.  Even the touch screen.


To wrap up our adventure, my brilliant (blonde) girl made the following statement to me.  The one missed call last night was from my phone, we had called it in hopes that it had fallen somewhere in the car.  As we got into our car to return home with the battlescarred phone she said:


“Mom, just think.  When you tried to call my phone last night, and all the bugs were settled around it in the grass, can you imagine their reaction?  If they’ve seen the movie Transformers, they must have been terrified when my phone rang.”


My response:  “Keli, bugs don’t go to movies.”