It Happened At Night -

Finally it happened at our house. When I went out to feed Sadie the Cat and Max the Dog at about 5:45 a.m., I saw the toilet paper hanging from our trees (the photo on the right is the view from the porch out towards the front gate. The other photo is what our house normally looks like). It was a beautiful job - in fact, with all of the trees around, I've often thought that our house would be the perfect candidate for an epic teepee. But, of course, Max the Dog lives out there, and would surely alert us of any hanky-panky, since he lives to bark at joggers, UPS men, and all kinds of critters. As I gazed at the strands, which had gotten moist from the night's fog and had then semi-frozen in place, I could imagine the perpetrators' glee as they realized they were in teepee wonderland.

....Have I mentioned that we have a dog? Yep - and a big, black, scary-looking one at that. And, he barks. A lot. But not that night. The dog that knows when someone is driving down the street with a dog in their car, and lets us know about it, chose to stay inside his doghouse, on the front porch, and sleep, instead of letting us know that our house was being strewn with paper (four days later, and after one rainstorm, there are still pieces of it twenty feet up in the tree tops). My first emotion that morning wasn't anger, but was extreme disappointment in my dog. What was he thinking? What was he doing? What had he eaten earlier that night to put him in some kind of apparent food coma? Shame, shame, shame.

We wondered who could have done it, but not for long - at 7a.m. Jason got the news that it was two junior high girls from down the street (why was this not a surprise?). That made me feel just the tiniest bit better - at least Max the Dog hadn't ignored a car or vehicle pulling up in front. Ironically, as I am typing this, that dog is barking at a group of cyclists heading down the road. What a dog!