Fish in My Hair

As I was saying....

10:19 PM, Apr. 28, 2006 .. 4 comments .. Link

Man, I could blog a whole lot more if my family would quit bugging me to cook meals and do laundry, like they think I'm some kind of mom or something. Gosh!

Anyway. I was going to tell the rest of the story about our plan to capture the wiley turkey predator.

Actually, it was my son's plan. I would have been content to throw the dead carcass (that's redundant, I suppose, since every carcass is dead, right?) over the fence for the coyotes, but Mr. Right-About-Everything hatched this harebrained scheme for us (read: MOM) to shoot the beast. I think my son believes a day is not complete without the use of gunpowder and loud, explosive noises.

So the plan was this: He would leave the carcass near our house, about 30 feet from the back porch. If the predator returned for the booty, I could see it from the family room windows and get a shot off. For whatever reason, this kid continues to think that I can actually hit something. Besides me having the advantageous viewing spot, my son reasoned that our black lab would sound the alarm if she saw the predator.

He had a point there. She certainly is quick to let us know when a gum wrapper blows across the yard, or when a horse fly passes gas half a mile away. A squirrel can't hiccup in peace around here.

So, actually believing my son's plan might really work, or possibly out of utter fatigue, I agreed to take on guard duty. For the next 90 minutes, my sister-in-law and I sat in the family room, discussing the uses of duct tape in parenting. The plan seemed to be working - about every fifteen minutes, the dog would burst forth in excited barking and we'd pop up out of our chairs to look out the window. Every time, however, the carcass was undisturbed and we saw no sign of the predator.

Then we made, as I later figured out, a tactical error. After the latest bark alert, the dog returned to the porch and looked up at the windows. My sister-in-law said, "She's so pretty," and I replied, "She's a good dog," seven little words that would prove to be our undoing.

After another twenty minutes or so, my sister-in-law realized we hadn't heard any noise for a while, so she looked out the window and then said, in a puzzled tone, "Is the turkey gone?" I looked, too, and she was right! And there was the dog, sitting passively and quietly on the porch.

WHA?!

Here's what I think happened. The dog, who is smarter than some government officials, heard our comments, and in typical lab fashion, interpreted them like this: "Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy! They like me!! They're going to let me in the house!! Get ready! Watch for the door to open! Any minute now!! Oh boy oh boy!!"

So there she sat, quivering with anticipation, with no regard to her assigned duty. A whole fleet of alien spaceships could have invaded my backyard and she wouldn't have made a peep. For all I know, she invited the predator over to pick up his leftovers so she could get in the house, ASAP.

So, the moral of the story is this: Timmy and Lassie may have saved everyone in their whole county from assorted disasters, but if I ever fall in a well, I'm doomed. My son will be too busy plotting figuring out how to make a turkey carcass explode, and the dog will still be on the porch, waiting for her invitation into the house.