Roman and I invited Marta and Pete over for pizza a few days ago. During the meal I was telling the story about the metal plate that I had found buried in the ground near the house. Marta was immediately intrigued.

She approached the now freshly planted area cautiously releasing her full psychic attention. She turned to me and said, “I don’t think there is anyone dead here.” That was fine with me other than ruining the punch line to an otherwise decent story.

Then she said, “Your problem is worse, it’s alive.” My mind leapt to visions of a creature trapped under the metal plate, clawing at it with dulled fingernails.

She pointed toward the edge of my new petunia patch. There were three footprints skirting the far edge. I could read Adidas in the soft soil. There was no question, they did not belong to anyone here. This could only mean the presence of a dreaded uninvited guest.

I have largely presented a picture of my bucolic life here in the trees, but there is a disturbing phenomena which the locals refer to as an uninvited guest.

These are people who exist just over the line of civilization. Transients who were, at best, down on their luck and at worst, a bit nuts. They sleep in the forest and will creep around houses at night looking for anything they can use. They aren’t actual thieves, they won’t break into your house. They pilfer. In that respect they are much like having a bigfoot family for neighbors.

I was immediately in a bind, in truth I wished the uninvited guests would go away but also I felt a responsibility to offer them food and water. Roman said that feeding them would only make them stay and probably attract more. I told him that I understood that reasoning when talking about raccoons or zombies but these were our own species.

Last night, unknown to Roman, I sat two cans of beans by the clothesline. When I checked this morning I saw that they were undisturbed but a circle of sticks had been placed around them. My expectation was that I would be patting myself on the back for having helped someone, but instead I felt a tinge of discomfort. I realized that, while formerly the relationship was like ghosts in the dark, by acknowledging their existence they now had permission to acknowledge me.

It was time to tell Roman. Roman looked at me blankly. He said that we never bought canned beans. Roman accompanied me to the clothesline but nothing was there. Not a hint of the cans of something other than beans or the sticks I had seen earlier.

Suddenly a thought rose to the surface. Had I imagined the entire thing? I walked to the planting bed to see if the Adidas shoe prints would be there.

I saw this plot on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and if the television was right the footprints would be gone. The plan would have been for Roman to convince me I was going crazy so he could have me committed and get my fortune and marry his secretary.

But the prints were unquestionably still there. I almost regretted seeing them. The Hitchcock version allowed a good clean explanation. Instead I still had many questions, like what I had put out if not beans, I hoped it wasn’t motor oil.