An Unexpected Sight

The sight in the hallway stopped me. I turned on the lights to see better. There, on the laminate floor were things I haven't seen in months -- muddy pawprints. We've had litle rain since mid-July. What has fallen has been one-tenth of an inch here and there. That's just enough to settle the dust for a few hours, maybe a day. That's not enough to green the grass and make it grow, to fill in the cracks in the earth, to refill groundwater supplies, to give me hope that there will be enough moisture in the ground come spring. But yesterday, it rained for several hours. When walking and driving in it, I was struck by how odd it seemed. How, I had started to get used to it not raining. That I had to think about putting on rain gear. When the rain stopped overnight, the rain gauge read 1.3 inches. That was enough to moisten the ground, to create a little mud, to make pawprints on the floor in the hallway.