So, in stark contrast with my previous entry, I should like to write about something immeasurably practical and mildly humorous. Though I have never seen Caddyshack, those of you who have will know more or less how I feel.

There is a gopher living under my lawn.

I have not yet exhausted every commercial means of removal, but to be frank I am not really in a financial position to literally throw money down holes all day long. Every time I think I've gotten rid of the beast, new mounds of fresh earth appear on my lawn. Everyone has a million suggestions on what works best--poisoned grain, traps, gas, flooding, professional exterminators--and I'm working my way through the possibilities.

Meanwhile, my lawn (which was not exactly prize-winning turf to begin with) is increasingly riddled with holes. As if the ants (another problem I barely keep under control) were not hard enough on the six different kinds of grass and four different weeds that constitute our front yard's greenery...

Of course it could be worse. I could have a garden! I could be depending on my garden for sustenance. As things stand, the gopher is mostly just an aesthetic nuisance--and just one among many, at that. The house we bought to live in while attending law school was a bargain, not least because it had been so neglected for so many years; we've remodeled and re-roofed and cleaned and painted and we've made a lot of progress, but the yard and the house's exterior await further funding.

But I digress. Nothing quite grounds you like a gopher. No matter how much I research on ethical living or implied easements, no matter how carried away I get in the high country of the mind, no amount of theory chases off gophers, or mows my lawn, or pulls my weeds.

This is a simple entry on a simple subject. I do not intend to disparage theory, for I know as well as anyone the value of theory. But there is value, too, in experience, and sometimes the honest work of keeping a yard or maintaining a house teaches more than mere husbandry.

It helps me, at least, to remember that for many people in this world, the reason words like "deontology" and "exculpatory" make their eyes gloss over is that they frankly have more pressing matters with which to concern themselves. I have been blessed in that the filthy burrowing rodent presently making swiss-cheese of my front yard is not a direct threat to my livelihood (though it may well be a threat to my sanity!). Though I do not live in the lap of luxury, I am wealthy enough to spend the bulk of my time and energy on matters of intellect and family and society rather than merely toil at the task of personal survival.

But it is easy to get lost in the high country of the mind, to become so obsessed with rational fictions that one forgets what life is like, and forgets that while we in our ivory towers write well-meaning policies and procedures to test our grand theories by telling others how they should live their lives, someone, somewhere, must continue--with or without the approval or support of the cognoscenti--to deal with the gophers.