Mudpuppies!

Mudpuppies or waterdogs are salamanders that spend their entire lives underwater in fresh water ponds, lakes, rivers and streams. They never leave the water unlike most of their relatives. These salamanders spend most of the daytime hours hiding under rocks or logs and come out at night to hunt. They will catch anything from snails to crawfish as they are not picky eaters! The average mudpuppy is about eleven inches long although some have been caught that are more than sixteen inches in length. That is one large mudpuppy! The mudpuppies are slimy things and most people refuse to touch them. A lot of folks even erroneously claim that they are poisonous! Not so with my mudpuppies, especially!

Today, we worked on the shed again. This building project is coming right along under the skilled supervision of Mark. Again, I painted while the guys hung more siding! This chore (except for the gables) was completed late this evening. My work was interrupted often as I was running inside to let the dogs out for a run. Sunny, the pup, still has not deciphered the boundary lines and has a tendency to go on the lam occasionally. I have to watch her like a hawk! After about the third halt in work, I decided to put both of them in the dog pen. There they would be safe and I could get my work accomplished. Knowing that Ms. Ezzy loves to loll in the kiddie pool, I tossed that in the pen as well. I filled it not believing that Sunny would ever play in the water. She did! As soon as I filled the pool, Sunny dove into it! Water splashed everywhere! Then she tried to catch her tail all the while sending water out of the pool. After about five minutes of this fun, I had to refill the pool. Then the chase was on! Ezzy started darting after Sunny...around the pen..through the pool..around the pen again! I refilled the pool a third time! By now, the area surrounding the pool was starting to get a mite muddy even though three inches of mulch lined the pen. Around and around, they went! Both dogs were soaking wet and kicking up mud like nobody's business!

I refilled that pool five times! The dogs had a great afternoon frolic and I got my painting finished for the day without interruption! This was a win/win situation for us all! Late in the evening, I checked on the dogs. They were still roughhousing and the pen now resembled a mudpit! My mud-wrestling dogs were happy campers albeit muddy happy campers! I silently hoped that they were worn to a frazzle and would not mind being bathed before bedtime! Mark took pity on me and washed both of my "mudpuppies". He said that they were both well behaved and were no trouble whatsoever! I think these waterdogs were just plumb tuckered out from all that activitity