This afternoon, I opened the front door to see a fat raccoon wedged into the house-type bird feeder. That fat guy was not going to leave there until it had munched every bit of the seeds I had put there just a few hours earlier. Aha! I quietly whispered to Ezzy.."Get 'im!" She roused from her nap on the steps and raced down the hillside where she turned in circles all the while looking hugely bewildered! The raccoon, in the meantime, decided to amble down the post of the feeder and make a leisurely escape to the marsh. Although the coon was only ten feet away from her, Ms. Ez never noticed the fat raccoon. Ha!
I am not sure if the dog is just getting far too old to patrol the gardens and feeders or if, perhaps, she has befriended the critters. Maybe she feels that it is just far too hot to do much running since the temperatures push the mid-nineties each afternoon! The raccoon did not wander far before stopping to see if it was being chased. Once it realized that the big, lumbering dog had already plopped back down on the steps to continue her nap, the raccoon returned to its meal. Now, that is a fine Howdy-doo! My dog has become lazy!....and the coon has become fat!
I really do not like to say that any day spent on the Bayou is a bad day, but...let's just say today was interesting! It started out quite well. I was happy to be alive, the house was decorated for Christmas and best of all..there are only twenty-seven more pounds of kumquats to make into marmalade! Whew! What a job that has been! Like I said..it started out to be a relatively nice day..then calamities started occurring one after another. Nothing too drastic, just the nuisance sort of calamities. First off, I had forgotten that I bruised my right hand yesterday by dropping the front grating of the cast iron stove on it. How I could forget that is beyond me as it is a lovely shade of purple and is still rather puffy, but I did. I remembered quite distinctly when I reached for the basket of laundry to tote to the clothesline. Owww! That smarted! After hanging out the clothes in the icy, north wind, I thought I might make up several batches of the marmalade. I grabbed the pot of chopped fruit from the refrigerator, stepped back to put it on the stove, heard a loud howl, and almost dropped the pot. Ms Put, the cat, had sat down right behind me and received a nice footstep on the tail..she tore up the stairs like a streak of lightning, howling and hissing the whole time. A banshee was loose in my house! She was making enough noise to wake up the entire county and at 6AM! Two strikes against me already today! I continued on with my marmalade production. CRASH! What was that??!! The noise came from the living room! The last thing I remember when I left there was how peacefully Ezzy, the dog, was sleeping on her bed. I raced to see what had happened! Ezzy was still on her bed as if nothing had happened. Huh? Wouldn't she be a mite upset if anything had crashed in here? Then I noticed her eyes..aha! Whenever this dog does anything that she knows is bad, she gets the big doleful eye look. The sad, puppy eye look. The "I did not do it!" look. ..........She did it...... (Not that!). No, she did it though! One lesson that I have learned as a Lab owner is that they never outgrow chewing on things. I was so proud of her recently as she had not gnawed on a thing! She was even careful not to chew her dog treats until I told her it was ok. Yes..I was proud! Prematurely proud it seems.
