After many days of heavy rain followed by precipitous drought, this morning we managed to spend some time in our garden. As we are pulling weeds from among our potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, and peppers, my beloved yells from the tomato patch: “Dead rat!” When I come to her, she shows me a mummified corpse of some animal. It looks like a petrified embryo. I pick it up and turn it around. Squirrel is the first animal that comes to my mind, but there are no squirrels in these parts. “That’s a kitten,” I decide at last. Most of it covered by dried skin, its crumpled limbs are all bones. Sharp teeth grin at us from the twisted skull. “Mind you,” I mumble as I turn the mummy around one more time, “someone must have brought it here.” Indeed, the last kitten that could have croaked around my house must have perished during the few freezing nights last winter. Or maybe a few winters ago. The tomato patch is only a couple of months old. “C’mon!” my beloved objects. But there is no doubt in my mind. This is but another attack of a local witch. No animal would have brought the mummified kitten from where it perished in the bushes surrounding our garden without chewing it a bit. It is in perfect shape, though. “Our witch,” it crosses my mind without a trace of malice.