Garden

My husband stared at the hoof tracks in the soft earth and shook his head with disgust. ‘It's bad enough that they bother the fruit trees; now they're after the garden.’ I stared at the tell-tale indentations between the sprouting potatoes and tasselling chives, and imagined them: their sleek necks, their soft brown eyes. We seldom saw them in daylight but their ghost shapes haunted our yard at night. They'd been stripping our small orchard for years, but they'd always left the garden alone. Until last winter, that is. We'd left the parsnips and carrots in the earth to sweeten, and one morning found them nibbled all the way to an inch below ground. Now they were back, these moonlight feeders.....