“Look, Johnny, that saguaro cactus has seven arms.”

“Uh-huh.” John sounded, his mouth not moving at all from its already agape state.

The public broadcasting program showed hundreds of saguaros in a valley.

“Oh,” she said excitedly, “The Lost Dutchman. I remember a time as a little girl going with my grandmother.” She smiled and looked over to John who sat reclined in his overstuffed chair.

“Remember when we camped there and hiked with the kids?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

John wasn’t listening. He was entirely engrossed in the article he was reading on his mobile. If he had listened, he’d remember the several times they had visited the park when they were younger.

Her smile faded into pursed lips and she turned back to face the television. With her Johnny retired, she’d hoped that they’d take their grandchildren there one day. Instead, John was spending his retirement growing increasingly partisan – increasingly distant.

In the documentary, a small, brown and white striped rodent scurried from a tree onto the ground. Its black eyes searched its surroundings for danger. Tom, the program’s director, intended to show the desert in all of its beauty and abundance. What Tom had not intended was that his 52-minute soundscape and time-lapse abusing immersive experience would become a battleground for the Davenports.

“A chipmunk,” Mrs. Davenport stated.

On the little screen, headlines demanded anger towards the opposition and John’s blood boiled as he read each bolded statement.

“Johnny,” she said, her voice bordering on a whine. “Look. See, a chipmunk.”

“Uh-huh.”

His knuckles nearly grazed the coke-bottle spectacles he peered under as he stabbed and swiped at the news media website.

“You’re not looking,” she said, raising her voice. In the past few years, her husband’s attention had increasingly been drawn into politics and further away from the things that they shared, such as a love for pan flute music which also featured heavily in Tom’s soundtrack for the desert scenery.

“Look at the T-V. A chipmunk.”

His wife’s voice penetrated into his attention just as John’s eyes had reached the word “Demonstrators” and, as the chief editor intended, the word conjured images of unruly mobs breaking windows and burning flags. John looked up at the television.

“That’s a lizard, dear.”

Mrs. Davenport looked back at the screen. A reptile capable of ejecting blood by bursting a vessel in its eye –under more dire circumstances– lazily sunbathed on a rock.

She inhaled and released her breath sharply. “I know what a chipmunk looks like, Johnny.”

“Well, I looked and it’s a lizard.” He returned his gaze back down at the screen trying to find where he’d left off.

“If you had looked when I said, you would have seen the chipmunk.”

The news media’s website editor had been sure to keep the narrative simple so that their audience could follow along. But regardless of his efforts, he could not help if reality crept in while the readers scrolled through the headlines. John had lost his place.

John looked to the somewhat modern television resting on a faux-rustic entertainment center directly above the Bluetooth-enabled turntable. The scene had changed to show a coyote trotting across the open desert. John knew chipmunks lived in the Sonoran Desert. He had observed them many times. He had pointed to them and said, “Look, a chipmunk.” He’d said this to his wife, his children, his grandchildren, and even to a complete stranger on an occasion at the Grand Canyon.

“That was one of those horned lizards, Alice.”

“There was a chipmunk, John. You just didn’t look when I said to.”

If Tom had known that another lingering second on the chipmunk would have prevented a conflict between the Davenports, he’d have given the little creature more time in the spotlight. To maintain his runtime, perhaps he’d have cut 30 frames from one of the many shots of Arizona sunsets; or rather just reduced all such sunset shots by 1 frame to achieve the same result. Tom is a nice bloke like that.

John huffed and again tried finding his place. He remembered feeling quite peeved about what he had read, but he could not recall anything else about it.

Alice Davenport leaned back in her tufted chair, put on her reading spectacles, and began a new search on her mobile for “arsenick”.