Last night was interesting…..I’ll detail the pre-school board fun here and save the politics for another post. I will say that my 3 minutes speaking last night received the most applause….but you’ll have to wait for that story. This, by the way, is the first post on the new laptop…..
Get home from school with the boys; tell Christopher he has about 10 minutes to kick loose and then we are doing some homework. Boys are gone (at warp speed) outside. I’m letting Wiley out, checking the mail, and look out the back window and see boys climbing up the treehouse (not fully operational yet). Yell out for them to get down and get this response
“we need to see the dog! He needs our help!”
So, I head outside, and, sure enough, there’s a dog in the pond on the other side of the brush and brambles, and he is barking his head off. Convince the boys that the treehouse isn’t the way to see what’s going on, and that we need to go down to where they’ve built forts and look out at the pond from there and try and get the dog to come out that way.
Head down there with the boys and with Nick, boy from down the street, and he’s there first and says that the dog is fighting something. Sure enough, the beagle (who belongs to the family next to the Hoffman’s, with the boys a year older than ‘the’ boys) is in the water, barking his head off, and going round and round with ‘something’. Sure enough, dog barks and lunges and then yelps as he gets bit by the something.
Make it extremely clear to the boys that, at this point, they won’t get near the dog now since rabies is at the top of my list of worries. The Mom of the beagle boys finally comes out now, and she’s screaming (and I mean screaming, top-of-the-lungs-you-can-hear-me-three-counties-away-screaming) for Velvet (which, at the time I heard as Melvin…) Of course, this beagle isn’t going anywhere. I know, from experience, that beagle’s are one-trick-ponies when confronted with small game.
So, head out to the CR-V and get my waders that I have for work purposes, grab a left over piece of railing from the treehouse and trudge into the muck and bramble and brush towards the ‘fight’. Have to literally knock down multiple branches to make my way close enough to make a difference…..Finally get close enough to get the dog to look at me, not the beaver (or raccoon…I was closest, I think it was a beaver) and the beaver takes the opportunity to head off into the sunset. During my approach I could tell that the dog got bit again.
Finally chase the dog towards beagle-Mom…who, at this point, has headed out into the mud herself. This wasn’t a good move; she only had flip-flops on and they’ve been sucked off of her feet by the ooze and she now has to navigate out of the mud, through the downed branches, in bare feet. There’s blood all over her legs, she’s barely holding back the toungue-lashing she wishes to bestow on the beagle kids (including the autistic teenager) and I make clear, again, that she needs to take the dog to the vet and ask if the vaccinations are up to date.
I have to go get Kevin now; have just enough time to go take a quick shower and change (I was in the pond up to my waist). Go get Kevin from track; reduce Kevin and Jane to helpless giggles and laughter by telling them what they missed as we drive home. Find out here that the beagle is Velvet, not Melvin.
So, we pull up, drop Jane off, head down the street. Ashton and Nick are out and I stop to tell Ashton that he missed all the fun…he says no, I gave Beagle Mom my phone to use.
And I remember, now, during all the screaming, that I had heard her yelling at her husband “you have to get home now, it’s an emergency”….and I ask Ashton, just to make sure, who did she call?
911, Ashton says.
“Really? Are you sure, 911?”
“yup…but obviously it wasn’t an emergency, so, they didn’t come”
I’m shaking my head in disbelief, and tell Kevin, Ashton, Nick, and now Matthew, who’s pedaled up the street, that so they are clear now and forever, you only call 911 for HUMAN emergencies. And Matthew chimes in “for animals, you call animal control”
The end. Today, the kids report that Melvin-Velvet has stitches, and is in quarantine…but will wait to hear more on both of those stories as the week plays out.
The pond? Very soft mud, extremely hard to get out to, and not nearly as cold as I thought it could have been.
