Startled to flight

Have you ever been walking in the woods and startled some small animal, perhaps a wee bunny, or a stoat, or maybe some fluffy songbird whose name you will never know? Alarmed, the little creature flutters or scampers away from you, down the path, to safety.

"Ah" Says the little one to itself "Now I am safe and distant from that heavy-walking giant."

But of course, they aren't, because that is the direction you are walking. And so inevitably you come upon the animal again. And again they rush away. They do not rush into the woods or fly up high and off into the wind. Why bother with such things when there is this lovely, simple path leading so effectively away.

And so the interruption and the fleeing repeats itself so many times you almost feel guilty. But you don't really know what to do either. There is the path, and the path is the way to go.

You walk, the creature hops away, and you repeat forever.

And so it is with shelving in the Fiction section at the library. There I am in the "C's". I push my cart down one side, shelving as I go. I sidle gently past the browsing patron who looks up from their book and shuffles to the side. As I work back up the row the patron sees me coming and clears out before I am upon them directly. They're just browsing, it doesn't matter if they're in the "D's" and "E's". So they pop around the corner and find some new volume to look at. I work my way up my empty aisle but soon I am on to the next aisle. And there is that patron once again. We do it all one more time. And we do it one more time after that as well, working our way through the whole alphabet one disturbance at a time.

I have only found one proper solution to all this, whether with stoats or browsing patrons. I stop and pull out a pad of paper. And I tell you about it, hoping that it takes so long that the issue clears of its own accord.