PUGNACIOUS

I’m with my neighbor Royce, Pugs aren’t my favorite dogs in the world. These 2 orphans glommed onto me during my morning walk. The sky was clear and blue, streams cascading fresh and full, shimmering the air with sound, a slight scent of pine. Glorious. I was reading a favorite book of mine and had stopped to write a bit in a notebook I was also carrying, when these miscreants came snorting up to me, one larger, maybe the papa or older brother, a plastic collar and packet around his neck and the other more diminutive, a punk. Both were beige with wrinkled smooshed faces. Every time a vehicle would pass, they would tear off on a short legged gallop, barking and snapping at the wheels then return with bluster and sneezes. After a few moments of this, my i-phone alarm went off telling me I needed to turn around and come home. It was 10 am and we’d be leaving by 11. I set off and they followed. I tried discouraging them, shooing them, but they’d have none of it. They were valdiree-valdirahing right beside me. Okay, whatever, they’ll turn back, sometime. Well, they didn’t. Long story short, they followed me home, then avoided being caught and instead gave chase to our chickens and geese, laming Felicity, causing a great deal of havoc. Richard got pissed, we argued, 11 o’clock came, he had to take off without me while I continued with this fruitless corralling. I needed a new idea. Finally, at a loss, I got in my outback and slowly drove/led them back to the crossroads I’d found them about a mile away, they yipping and barking beside me. I’d have to let them rest every once and awhile. I was so trying to rise above all this, trying to see the positive opportunity, but it was hard. My back had rewrenched itself giving chase, my patience was thin. I kept imagining our neighbor Dennis’s satisfaction when he allegedly gunned down a husky that had been killing chickens up and down our road a few years back, but I don’t think that could be classified as a positive, could it? The one “rise above” thought that stuck was these pugs want to go home, everyone appreciates home, no place like home, so I tried to hold that in mind as I crept the car along and watched them zig zagging in my back and side mirrors. These are creatures that want to get home. And then a navy blue car began following me and the pugs. I pulled over, so did she, I parked the car and got out, and as this spry older woman with straight white hair in a bowl cut stooped out of her car, I asked if these dogs were hers. She looked like a central casting fairy tale character, not quite a witch, but … “Yep!” she snapped as she clawed at them up, snatching them up. “You little brats, c’mere.” ‘They followed me home and spooked our chickens and geese.’ She could’ve cared less. She gave a sidelong glance and a semblance of a smile and then went on with her business. I got in the car and drove off, looking for a turn around. Well, I did my duty. The dogs were my responsibility – okay, I could argue that in court, they were THE WITCH’S RESPONSIBILITY!! But they followed me home. I should’ve been more insistent with my shooing. And now Felicity was limping and in pain, and Richard and I were pissed at one another and, and, and … whatever. I turned the car around and headed home and as I passed back by the hobgoblin’s car, I saw her ripping some kind of meat product from a cardboard box perched on her trunk, her smile had a touch of the maniacal.

And I never exaggerate.