It is a delight to have our fence in place – thanks, dad! (Not that my father had anything to do with building the fence, but he did pay for it. Jews don’t do carpentry. That’s why Jesus got kicked out.) The dogs love romping around the yard unfettered; Jamie runs back and forth hooting, and Max is usually very busy smelling things and chasing things while I’m watching him, but if I leave and come back, I’ll find him laying flat on his back in the middle of the yard, basking in the sun.
Last night I let Max out after dinner, and after twenty-five minutes or so realized that I hadn’t heard a bark out of him. I called for him and shook the bag of treats – no dog. A patrol of the yard yielded nothing until I walked by the shed calling his name. Yelp, bark. Max found his way under the shed once before, through some loose bricks in the back. He can get behind the shed easily; I, however, have to walk through a rose bush, some other shrubbery, and fend off the mosquitoes that congregate back there. So I got a sweatshirt, worked my way through the thorns, and found his point of entry: he had moved all of the bricks away from a six inch hole under the floor of the shed. I looked under the floor and saw one of his paws, all the while swatting mosquitoes off my feet and legs, and unable to reach under the shed without hurting myself. I ran back inside, covered as much of myself with clothing as I could manage, got some work gloves, and went back outside to retrieve Max. This time there was no foot, and no noise from him. He had been outside for nearly an hour, and although I didn’t know how long he was under the shed, it was hot as anything outside and I was starting to get nervous. As I was heading back into the house to get the key to the shed and tools to pull up the floorboards, Scott arrived home. Together we pulled up a board and found Max, looking dopier than usual and with his hindquarters lodged between the bottom of the shed and the ground, but otherwise okay. I extracted him from the shed, and after a moment he perked up and shook himself off. As I followed him out to the yard, I said a silent thank you to K9 Advantix, because god only knows what is under that shed. Scott put the various parts of the shed back together, and I started walking back toward the house, just in time to see Max… running back behind the shed.
Clearly, we were far more traumatized than young Max.
You know, now that I think of it, there is something sort of creepy about the fact that Jesus started life as a carpenter, and was killed by being nailed to a piece of wood. Today, that would be an episode of Law and Order. I think about these things entirely too much. Which reminds me, a few nights ago, Scott was scrolling through the digital cable on-screen directory. One channel had a show on called “Waiting for…” and I got all excited thinking it was Waiting for Guffman. Turned out that it was Waiting for God on the nun channel. That was really disappointing.
