Last night just as I was dozing off, something set BeeBee off and she started moving restlessly around the bed and acting like she wanted to jump off. I automatically tried to determine if anything had changed but that was useless. It was dark so we were both probably equally visually so I doubt anything I couldn’t see set her off. And because she’s deaf, that ruled out any unusual sounds triggering her display. Although it’s always possible that she could have smelled something I couldn’t given her enhanced sense of small, there’s no way I’d know that. Under the circumstances, I did the only thing I could think of which was to take her out. (When in doubt, take them out.) No sooner did I put her down outside than she made a beeline for the door, making it very clear that there was nothing outside or that she could do outside that was on her mind. Once we came back in, I did the only other thing I could think of. I told her to settle down because, if I didn’t get any sleep, she would not want to be around me the next day. She did and was asleep before I was.
This morning when I came downstairs, the alien was right in the middle of the kitchen floor and the porcupine beside him. The last time I’d seen the alien it was upstairs, and I haven’t seen the porcupine in ages. Maybe Bee sensed the alien locating the porcupine, or the porcupine locating the alien, or the two of them rendezvousing in the kitchen to do whatever aliens and porcupines do in such places. While I was fixing their breakfasts and doing my yoga, all of the dogs walked around the two toys without disturbing them. It was only later when Bee and Fric got involved in one of their increasingly common, boistrous games in which one of them tries the flip the other by grabbing the other by the muzzle that both the alien and the porcupine took a hit.
I guess it’s also possible that something related to the puppies set BeeBee off because she seems to view them far more maternally now than she did in the past. I don’t know if that’s because she’s in heat or because the pups are now big enough they don’t look like rodents of other edibles any more. But even if she sees herself as Aunt Bee, Fric still isn’t convinced. As soon as she sees her puppies getting too chummy with Aunt Bee through the pen, she leaps into it and does the snarly bit. Fric also seems determnined to keep nursing the pups, allowing them to eat just enough puppy food to develop their eating skills, then snarfing up the bulk of it herself. Other times as soon as I put the puppie’s food down, she shamelessly throws herself down beside and flaunts her mammary glands as if to say, “Why eat that when you can have this?” Can’t imagine what Freud would say about that.
Below is the first decent close-up of Bee that I’ve had in a long time. Her wonky jaw is pretty obvious as is the ear that continues to march to the sound of a different or distant drummer of its own.
