I’m back to dating these again because I got way behind in posting the updates.
Frica did the “Oh, my God, there’s the yellow alien!!!” routine yesterday morning, running toward the alien on the kitchen floor as if she’d been searching for it for years. She picked it up and started to take it upstairs, but the cat was on the back of the couch and took a swipe at her. When she opened her mouth to bark at the cat, she dropped the alien–isn’t there an Aesop’s fable about something like this?— and it bounced off the back of the couch to the pillow, then off the coffee table onto the floor in the living room. She stayed on the steps long enough to watch it go, but then went up to the puppies. As so often happens, I then forgot all about it, too.
I read in the paper Sunday that we’ve had over 85″ of precipitation this winter, compared to an average of 40-some and less than 10 last year. I’d guess that at least 30-35″ of that has been in the form of sleet, freezing rain, and rain. There’s now so much snow on the areas where the dogs usually relieve themselves and it’s covered with such a hard crust, that they’ve taken to going on the walk. Needless to say, this does not appeal my anesthetic sense. Sunday morning I went out to clean up as usual, forgetting that it was below zero and windy Saturday night. The shovel bounced off my target turd and I, for reasons that escape me but surely dwell somewhere in the realm of senile dementia, decided to kick it loose. As usual, I was wearing my LLBean boots and let me tell you, it hurts like hell when you kick a frozen turd wearing such footwear. I thought I broke my toe, , thought of offering up such an explanation in the local emergency room (providing it hadn’t already healed by the time they got around to seeing me), and rejected the idea immediately. Instead I ascertained that my toe was as intact as that turd, limped into the house, and decided to wait until the next thaw–which is sort of happening today as yet another batch of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain comes through.
Yesterday, though, my desire to wait lost out to more practical thoughts and I reminded myself that, unless I wanted the pets and myself to freeze to death, I ought to get back outside and clear the snow the plow guy had left next to the woodpile. I foiled the hard crust by beating on it with a sledge hammer, then shoveling what remained. Crude, but effective. But also tiring. After that I rewarded myself with a rare interlude of lying on the couch watching a movie. Watson, BeeBee and the cat immediately joined me there, but Frica alternated between the couch and the stairs behind the couch.
Or at least she did until she spied the yellow alien on the floor. Once again, this triggered an enormously joyous response and for the next 5 minutes or so, she played with it, tossing it into the air, chasing it, making it squeak. In short, engaging in an orgy of bliss with it…until BeeBee took it away. Considering Fric’s instant snarly act whenever Bee gets anywhere near the pups, it always amazes me that she gives up her toys so graciously. So now the alien lies on the living room floor where BeeBee dropped it after she’d tossed and stomped on it a few times herself.
For sure, what Fric did to the alien yesterday did not even remotely resemble maternal behavior. Yesterday the alien was obviously a toy, albeit a very special toy, at least for that short interval. What it will be today or tomorrow is anyone’s guess.