During the mysterious blog absence, Ava and I were enjoying a quiet afternoon at home. The doorbell rang and we looked out the window to see who it might be. There was no one on the front steps and no cars parked on the sidewalk.

“Maybe, it’s a package!” Ava shouted running down the stairs to the door. “It’s probably a package for daddy.

HungryMan receives a steady stream of small packages. In fact, he is the recipient of nearly all the packages that come to our house. Ava and I used to open them, but one only has so much interest in cords, adaptors, drives and plastic things for the interior of a computer, projector, and whatever else he keeps in his geeked out man-cave.

As for HungryMan, his interest is unending, as apparently is his need. I mean really there must be an end to the cords. Really, there must.

Curious, we walked down the stair and opened the door. There was no one there. We checked behind the flower pots, but there was no package left by a supersonic delivery man.

Even though there was no note directing us to do so, we decided to walk to the back of the house. And there, propped against the back door was a very large package.

“Is it for Daddy? Is it for Daddy” Ava hollered as she raced toward the tall white box.

There was no sign of a delivery man anywhere. No note. No truck. Not even tread-marks from a frantic Fed-Ex driver.

Together we hefted the Ava-sized box up to our living room to inspect the package.

“Mama, look!”

“It’s a badger! The package’s from the Badgers. Mama! It’s from the Badgers!”

“Ava, do you think there might be a badger in it?”

After much discussion and inspection of the box, we concluded that it would be best to wait to open the Badger package until HungryMan came home. Even if there wasn’t a badger in the box, they may have sent Ava something “very scary!”

As it turns out, HungryMan was hungry. Famished actually, with a hunger only a Chipotle burrito can cure. So we tossed the suspicious looking box in our trunk and drove to burrito stand to meet her daddy.

After munching on chips and guacamole and devouring nearly half of his Chicken Fajita Burrito, HungryMan agreed to take his keys to the seal concealing the mysterious gift.

Inside the box was another white box.

Inside the white box was “the baby carriage I always wanted! Oh, I’m so excited. It’s just like Naomi and Audrey and Cate’s!”

Ava gave the doll pram a big hug and then asked, “How did the Badgers know that I wanted the carriage the Naomi and Audrey and Cate have?”

Sweetheart, I’m nearly as baffled as you are. How in the world did the Badgers know that I ordered that carriage from Target? And how did they get a hold of it?

It appears that the pesky little creatures are waving a white box of truce. Let’s just hope it’s not a Trojan Horse, or we might have to devise bigger badger traps.

Perhaps there’s a use for all those cords after all.