Frightening a little creature always disturbs me

I frightened our little hamster Sophie this morning and it has bothered me all day. She was on the top floor of her four-story cage, sitting on top of the little building that is her potty while Jackie was talking to her, something she loves. I got up from a chair and with the light behind me, Sophie saw me as a dark shadow, possibly a hawk. It's amazing how fast a hamster can move at such a time. Like a shot she was back in her nest and hidden from view.
When something like that happens it triggers a flashback to the winter of 1945-46 when I was a military policeman in a town in Northern Germany. A former German paratrooper named Muller had a small band that played for dances at the Officers Club. They played a variety of music but Muller refused to play American jazz. The officers decided to show him who was boss, make an example of him and others.
The entire contingent of MPs was gathered one night and told we were to raid a number of German houses looking for American cigarettes or candy bars.
"But the women do our laundry and that's how we pay them," the officers were loudly informed. They didn't care.
None of us had any enthusiasm for the job. My friend Frank Schwartz and I made up one team. Like the others, when we found cigarettes or candy we overlooked it. The officers were furious. While we were in the home of a man we knew, an officer swaggered in the door. Frank had just found a pack of cigarettes in a desk drawer and knew the officer would search it. He tossed the pack to me. I ripped it open, lit a cigarette and put the pack in my pocket.
The fat officer was suspicious. He ordered us to search upstairs. We opened a bedroom door and found two blonde-haired little girls staring at us from under the covers. They appeared about nine or ten but could have been a little older because all children in wartime Europe were small for their age. To them, men wearing white MP helmets meant American Gestapo. We tried to reassure them but they couldn't understand and remained terribly frightened.
Although we had found nothing, the officer said to arrest their father. It happened to a number of others that night. Later I looked through the peephole in a steel door at the jail and saw the father holding his head in his hands.
A military tribunal - that means give a man a fair trial and then hang the guilty bastard - handed each of the men 15-year prison sentences. How long they actually served, I don't know.
The American Gestapo? Perhaps we were. Was I proud of my role in the injustice? Not for a minute. To this day it bothers me, just as frightening Sophie bothers me.

That would bother me too. Not frightening Sophie but taking away a man's freedom just to put him in his place. Bullies are very weak people who use their strength/position of power to make themselves feel important. In the eyes of the rest of the world they diminish themselves.

I would feel less bad about Sophie because she behaved instictively. The way you or I would do if we put a hand too close to a heat source. The instinct to withdraw is faster than it takes for the brain to receive an impulse from a nerve. It's a reflex reaction to protect us from harm. Sophie wasn't frightened; she simply reacted to a perceived threat without any thought processes involved.

Sophie won't remember the incident until it happens again. Like my older brother said to my twelve-year-old niece, "You can tell me something you told me three days ago because I won't remember." The advantages of age and loss of short-term memory!

Pity your long-term memory won't give you a break.

You have an honorable heart, Dick. There is much during war that makes no sense. Your book points that out repeatedly. I am just about to the point in the text that this post relates to, I believe.

I am sure Sophie will forget the incident, and you will probably not frighten her that way again.

I have found with my animals that if I startle them, my calm and reassuring voice settles them down. In fact, sometimes I talk to them if I think they are around the corner and cannot see me coming.

In fact, the cows hear my voice and come, expecting grain, even when I'm not talking to them!

Animals are great. They all believe they are part of the family.
I know Sophie acted instinctively because any delay would mean it was too late, but still I hate to think I did that when she was enjoying herself so much.

I have to say something here.

Animals are so very quick on the instints and also on the forgiving.
I Imagine that as soon as Sophie started from your shadow, it was equally as quick that she said, "Ah, It was Dick! There is nothing to fear!"

What a wonderful heart you have!

You know, this day I have been worried about the squirrels in our trees. Tomorrow we expect 65 mph winds in these woods. That is more than awesome, it is terrible.

I think back on past big winds and find that not one squirrel or baby squirrel has blown out of a tree. They do hold on tight to their dreams.

Dick, do not worry about the shadow. I imagine that mother and father Hampsters have told the young ones, even in Ohio, of the old threats, the hawks and the snakes. That is as it should be. It is the same as you telling your children about the dangers of this earth and to be prepared. At least Sophie does not have to deal with the Office Of Homeland Security!

Tonight I am worried about 5000 styrofoam hydrostackers flying off into the woods. I am never prepared.

Love,
Betty

My thoughts are with you, Betty. I hope your hydrostackers survive.

Dick,
another meaningful story. Bad guys wear uniforms of many colors. We even have a few of them today in politics.