I love my Sunday afternoon naps. I go to church,
then go out to lunch somewhere with some friends, then climb into my lazy boy
with the game on in the background, and I’m out for two hours. It’s called the day of rest for a reason, after all.
Well, there I was yesterday, enjoying my siesta when
I was suddenly and quite rudely disturbed by my beautiful but frantic wife.
There she was standing over me with a very forced smile on her face, the kind
that people get when they are trying to remain calm. Her eyes were another
matter. They were practically screaming, “Oh my God, what the heck??!!”
Since she had just roused me from a deep and
satisfying sleep, I didn’t hear much of what she said at first, but I did
manage to pick up three words…Lucy,
digging…ants.
The next thing I remember was running down stairs to
find my puppy outside on the deck looking positively thrilled with herself.
Apparently, Pam had let her out into the backyard where she was having a grand
time digging a massive crater on the back side of the oak tree in the middle of
our yard. Unfortunately, she had disturbed a rather large ant colony with her
excavations several battalions of which had swarmed up her legs and tail and
were now racing helter skelter all over her perfect pink puppy belly. It was my
job to fix it. The unspoken accusation was thick in the air…You wanted a puppy, you got your puppy!
In a flash I grabbed Lucy and raced upstairs and
threw her in the shower. She was positively giddy and seemed unfazed by the
presence of several hundred ants crawling all over her. It was all such great
fun! And to top it all off, now Daddy and her were going to rough house, and
water was involved!!
Ants began to drop off of her in bunches. There must
have been a thousand of them imbedded in her thick tail. It reminded me of what
our southern border must look like when the border patrol takes a coffee break.
It took me nearly thirty minutes of sustained scrubbing and rinsing, scrubbing
and rinsing until she was finally free of them. But this task was only the beginning.
What was I going to do to keep her from going right back out there and doing it
again?
I had been waiting for the weather to clear all
weekend so I could cut the grass and prepare the yard for the aeration and
seeding guy to come this week. Although it was still misting rain, I could wait
no longer. While I was raking up the pine needles, it came to me. I would use
Lucy’s skittishness against her. I would take the seven black garbage bags full
of yard debris over by the fence and place them around the base of the two big
trees. Lucy is mortally afraid of large black things and has shown a particular
aversion to going anywhere near those bags. Two hours later the yard work was
done and both trees were surrounded by menacing black plastic monsters.
The first time I let her out into her back yard she
came to a screeching halt at the top of the deck steps. The fur on her back
immediately rose up in alarm. It took her five minutes to summon the courage to
venture down the steps. Then she walked gingerly towards the tree. Then I heard
her let out a low growl, then a couple of furtive barks. Finally, she pranced
away over to her pooping grounds at the far end of the yard where she
discovered yet another black bag patrol surrounding a second tree. At this
point the barking became full throated. She was not a happy dog.
This morning, I’m watching her walk around carefully
out there, sniffing mightily, looking totally baffled by what has turned out to
be my superior strategy.
Yes, I am feeling
quite cocky. At least until the next catastrophe befalls us. Being a puppy
parent isn’t for wimps, people.
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