Tuesday, September 14, 2010

The killer and the idiot

Do you ever feel like scenes from your life could easily be added into a sitcom?  Lately this is happening to me more than I care to admit.

Here's a recent example:

First, let's introduce the characters in the sitcom:

The killer:


The idiot:
(yes, the idiot is the human in the picture - me)


The story:

It was a lovely, sunny Sunday morning in Iowa.  The Child was watching yet another episode of The Magic Schoolbus, so I snuck outside to the deck in my pajamas with a latte and the Sunday paper.  Ah, a relaxing weekend morning.  

I was happily reading the paper, and the dogs were wandering around the yard or laying in the sun.  Life is good.

Then Rip started to root around in the bark near the deck.  Maggie and Ziggy joined in.  I peered over the edge of the deck and saw a little shrew run into the hosta.  Rip ran after it.  There was a couple of squeaks (from the shrew) and Rip trotted out proudly carrying a small, dead, grey shrew.  

I set my coffee down and walked down the steps, telling Rip to "leave it."  This works wonders with Maggie and Ziggy - I say "leave it" and whatever was in their mouth gets rapidly expelled.  Unfortunately I haven't taught Rip this command yet, so he merely looked at me, stuck his tail in the air, and proudly trotted off with the shrew.

Would Rip eat the shrew?  I didn't know, so I decided to go get it from him.  I got close, and he smugly and cheekily trotted just out of reach. I was worried that he would eat the shrew, and not fully caffeinated (my excuse for what happened next), so I didn't want to leave him alone to go inside and get dog treats to use as an "exchange" for the shrew.  

I know that chasing dogs doesn't work.  Chasing after a dog means they'll merrily run away, and enjoy the "mom's  chasing me" game.  I tried running away from Rip to see if he'd drop the shrew and follow.  He followed, but didn't drop his prize, and stayed just out of reach.    

Then I thought to myself, "he's just a puppy, how fast can he be? I'll just catch him."  So when he got close, I tried to grab him.  He ran.  So I ran after him.  He may be quicker on the turn, but surely I'm faster than a puppy when running in a straight line?  Wrong.  

I soon found myself running around my back yard - barefoot and in my PJ's - trying to catch a puppy with a shrew.  Of course I had no success, then I pictured how I must look to my neighbors (and that picture was not a pretty one).  

Finally I regained my sanity (maybe the caffeine kicked in?), stopped chasing the puppy, and ran into the house to get some marrow bones I was thawing.  I gave bones to M & Z, making a big deal of it.  Of course the puppy ran up to me, smelled the bone, and dropped the shrew at my feet.  

Wasn't that easy?

6 comments:

  1. Laughing with tears in my eyes. Do your jammies have feet? Plaid? Funny, baaad puppy.

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  2. (Sort of) luckily for us Bandit wants us to have his prizes. I remember the first time he brought a dead squirrel inside to drop at Aaron's feet. There was much freaking out.

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  3. But sometimes the idiot is the dog! One time, I watched Sam chase a field mouse around the base of a tree for 5 minutes. He's usually a pretty adept hunter but he got in a loop (pun intended) and couldn't stop or catch the mouse.

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  4. I've been there, but the prize for young Stoney was a mummified cat that he had unearthed from an unused out building. I don't remember how long I spent chasing him around trying to get him to drop the thing so I could scoop it up with a shovel. He was so proud!

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  5. Ok, a mummified cat is *much* worse than a shrew.

    I seem to remember a litter of puppies here (about 10 weeks-going-home-age) who were running through the yard with something. Someone said "your puppies have something!" Was it Mandy who said it? Anyway, it was a mummified tree rat. That was pretty bad.

    And then there was Flirt, who once caught baby mice and put them in the puppy box when her pups were about 3 weeks old.

    And then there was the gopher head that Julie deposited in our bed early one morning. Shades of "The Godfather".

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  6. LOL. I love it when they make us look like fools. I think it is on purpose. Revenge for things we never realized we'd done.

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