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In the darkest part of night I saw it, belly-low crawling behind the recycling bins. I thought a man, it looked a man — its skin was coarse and vegetal, and unclothed against the balmy and insect-laden air. It spotted me as I spotted it, and we froze and stared, each at the other; it saw me pale against the sky and I saw it grubby against the sand and grit.
I stepped to the side and in a wider field of vision there was the root.
It twisted out of the shadows between houses and up past lighted porches before curling upwards and inwards towards the recesses of the creature's lowered belly. It tracked my gaze, followed my eyes. I did not flinch away, for I knew its sort. "Wait," I said, and I moved slowly back to the front door.
I stepped inside and darted to the fridge, pulling out a container of sliced canteloupe. Meat was easy to come by; there was no shortage of stray cats and belligerent iguanas. Fruit, though, would be collected and eaten. I hoped the creature would accept it as a treat, especially cold on such a warm night.
Back outside the thing had overturned my neighbor's trash bin. They had made no effort to act neighborly in all the years that we had lived in proximity to each other, and so I did not care. I crouched to leave the canteloupe next to my bins, as the thing seemed to have an inordinate interest in them. It shambled forward with a speed I had not anticipated and I ran back for the safety of a sturdy house.
I locked the door and checked it twice, then checked the lock on my back door and closed all the window shades tight. It was a creature, ostensibly a harmless one, but it was a dark night all the same; my mind was prone to wandering and adding fuel to its wild rambles was deeply unwise. Yet even safe inside, I did not undress for fear that the creature was watching. I lay in bed fully clothed, swathed in blankets and tracing the line of its root in my head. It was not so large, its range was not so wide; I kicked myself mentally. It was possibly foolish to have fed it, I did not need the responsibility of a wandering creature nor whatever protective services it could offer. I hoped it would move on, but knew already that this would not happen.
In the quiet of the house I could hear it scrabbling outside. If I did not know better I would assume that it was a cat, perhaps a raccoon.
In the morning, I decided, I would call my father. If he did not know how to dispose of it, he would know someone who did. Someone who was willing to sever the root, defense be damned.
I said Shema with extra kavanah.