Charlie comes running over. “Is everything alright?”“Yeah, why?”
“Is Scruffy okay???”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I had been walking around the yard with the dogs.
Butchie, the lab, loves when I join in on the Morning Sniff. It shows a unified front when the entire pack patrols the property together, marking all the standard posts. My two old boys and me… no one would dare trespass into our territory.
Scruffy, the little white cockapoo, can’t see much anymore, and his hearing isn’t very good. So for him, patrolling means sending out pings in every direction to see if he gets a hit. Sure, it looks like he’s barking incessantly at nothing, and perhaps some of the neighbors find it a bit annoying, but he knows what he’s doing.
He is feared by squirrels, rabbits, and even a few select deer that have made his acquaintance during the daily 6 am tour of duty. He’s got a pretty bad-ass rep around here.
Both noses go up in the air. They smell it. I see the white fur in the grass and immediately started clapping my hands to lead the boys back into the house.
Then I go to get Sean. There are many reasons for a woman to get married, but the main one is so you don’t have to deal with gross stuff.
“Honey, can you help me?”
There are many reasons for a man to get married too, but the kind of lovin I give my dear husband is the main one. I gave him real good lovin just a little while ago.
So he cheerfully responds, “What’s up?”
“There’s a dead opossum in the yard. We have to take care of it right away so Scruffy doesn’t try to eat it.”
He knows when I say “we” I really mean him.
And he knows Scruffy would probably be chewing on dead opossum corpse in a second if given the chance. We’ve caught him eating dead rats before, and dead birds, and even his own crap. Even Butchie’s crap, and that stuff is hard core. Surprisingly, he does not find most vegetables palatable and will spit them out.
Sean gets a big shovel from the garage. We head for the back yard.
“Are you gonna bury it?”
“Nope.”
He positions the shovel beneath the fluffy white fur, lifts the carcass, and heads for the back of the property.
I’m following a few feet behind him, sickened yet oddly curious and excited.
As he nears the woods, he positions the shovel behind him. With a few running steps, he then catapults the animal about 30 feet into the air. It lands in the bushes with a loud thud.
Although in retrospect it seems wrong, we are in an uproar.
“Holy shit! Did you see how far that thing went?”
“Did you hear it hit the ground? Oh my gosh, that was hysterical!”
Our neighbor Charlie had been involved in some early morning yard maintenance. He had grown concerned when he saw us walking into the back yard with a shovel. Both of our dogs are pretty old.
Seeing a white fluffy creature launched into the woods had only confirmed his fears.
Charlie comes running over. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Is Scruffy okay???”
“Charlie! Do you really think I would give my best friend of the past 15 years a send-off like this? You were a good dog…. Whoosh!”
“Well I would hope not!”
It was a mistake, of course, throwing that animal into the woods. It was a large beast, and it was the middle of July. For the rest of the summer, no matter where we were in the house or yard, we always seemed to be downwind of its foul, deteriorating remains.
I kind of wished something would eat it.
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