Short, sweet, and to the point.
That’s
my goal as I write this at 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday—paddling madly against the
tide in the procrastination bay of time frames for my column.
I’m not
sure where the last week went. I lost track of it at “Hello” and then was
whisked away by the infinite chores in my neck of the woods.
I often
think that even 24 hours of sunshine wouldn’t be enough time for me to get done
all the things on my list.However
there one “to-do” I don’t have to worry about around here and that’s homeland
security.
I have my own four-legged officers and they run a very tight border
operation. Who needs a high tech system installed when there’s two skunk-bomb
sniffing, wild animal chasing, squirrel and chipmunk patrol canine units whose
only fee is a daily dish of dry kibble and the occasional scratch behind the
ear.
I am one
lucky lady. My world is protected by the dog equivalent of the Paladins of
Charlemagne’s court in ancient Rome.
Even at
2:30 a.m., in otherwise quiet times in the country, I can be raised from the
dead of sleep by the warrior dog whose sniffer works overtime under the open
kitchen window where he lays on his blanket in the house.
Whatever it is
outside that walks in noiseless wild animal shoes triggering “Cash” to jump out
of his dream world and into a barking frenzy, must be scared to death. Heaven
knows the ceiling in my bedroom has more than one set of fingernail marks where
I’ve clung like a petrified “Sylvester the cat” in a Bugs Bunny cartoon when my
homeland security system went off while I was asleep.
Every
once in a while I think I would like to own chickens and let them “free range”
the farmyard, until I see what happens when a pigeon makes one wrong move by
landing on the ground here. My chickens would never have a moment’s peace with
“Dot” on shift.
Even a
snake’s skin shed by its owner has no chance of deteriorating in the summer sun
as nature had intended. If Dot sniffs one out, she snaps it up and whips it
around in her jaws until it’s in tatters and poses no threat to the safety of
international peace.
“Mr.
Groundhog” didn’t know what hit him the other day either when Dot spotted him
sitting on the woodpile cleaning his buckteeth.
I happened on the scene while
walking to the barn on a mission and caught a glimpse of the little rodent’s
wide-eyed surprise as Dot, in her Usain Bolt impression, sprinted across the
farm yard in world record time and in a flying leap cleared the wood pile and
disappeared behind it taking the groundhog with her.
Within seconds she bolted
back over the woodpile with the mortified groundhog in her fangs. I expect it
was experiencing what it felt like for me at the Emo Fair one year when I was
thrown about on the “Tilt-a’ Whirl” ride.
The only
difference is that I survived the ordeal. In a
scene from the movie “The Quick and the Dead” suddenly I had a groundhog
carcass to dispose of.
If Dot
had had her way, she would have guarded her rodent prize until she was old and
grey, and there wasn’t much I could do to distract her from standing over
victory other than lock her in the house while I disposed of the critter.
However,
as I soon found out, chucking the woodchuck into the bountiful grassland marsh
that layers my property here certainly was not the answer.
Two days
later while hoeing the garden I looked up to see Dot hovering over the puffy
groundhog cadaver in the middle of the yard after she had been on a search and
retrieve mission.
Burying
it in the field with a shovel six feet under wearing a “hazmat” suit was my
only recourse to preserve the standards of homeland security set by the canine
soldier that Dot is.
Often
while on a scouting operation to the edges of the farm border, Dot will return
black as night with dirt and I know some encroaching gnawing mammal has likely
met its maker before it had a chance to set up camp.
Short,
sweet, and to the point.
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