Speaking of Schuster, I shall again. Continuing. I went to bed at 3, then was rudely awakened at 4:20, the red digital light on my radio said. Mary was hysterical. When Mary is hysterical, I know not to rush into things since her notion of a crisis is different from mine, and, I suppose, most everyone else's. I did not understand what she was saying, but I could tell it had to do with Schuster. What doesn't these days?
Well, I stumbled out of bed, tried to stand up, started to slide down to the floor, caught myself on the side of the bed and focused. She was still hysterical, screeching excitedly about Schuster eating something. Apparently he had been eating a dead mouse, at least it was dead now from what I could gather. Mary is a carnivore from way back, but there is a significant gap in her mind and imagination between what the meat on her plate was, where it came from, and how it looks on her plate now. Schuster eats his mice like steak tartare, raw. When she settled down a bit, I gathered that whatever Schuster had was in our hall bath; Mary was holding Schuster on our bed, trying to keep him from licking her since his tongue had recently, she shuddered, touched the creature. He licked her anyway and crawled over to me. I let him lick my hand, and when he rolled over I gave him a super belly rub and told him he was a good boy.
Then I tried to get off the bed again, managed that without too much trouble, and walked down the hall to the bathroom. And there it was, fully displayed on the floor, with a paper towel under it. It was impossible to tell what it had been, though mouse was probably the best guess, for it was now red and raw and stringy and thoroughly disgusting. I got two more paper towels and a plastic bag, wrapped the remains in the towels, put those in the plastic bag, stuffed the plastic bag inside an empty coffee bag, and stuffed the whole business down in the trash to be dealt with later.
When I returned to the bedroom, Mary was now under the covers, Schuster was on top of the covers looking pleased with himself, if not slightly bewildered. I gave him another short belly rub, crawled under the covers on my side of the bed and immediately fell back asleep. End of story, crisis averted, mischief managed.
It occurred to me as I was about to lose consciousness, however, that we were fortunate that Simon had not bestirred himself and found the remains while we were all in the bedroom, for we would have been up the rest of the night trying to catch him and pry it out of his mouth. I was also rather proud of Mary for having managed to get the thing away from Schuey. One risks serious finger damage or loss trying to remove meat from cute, savage dachshunds. I still haven't asked her how she did it. And, she will be asleep again tonight by the time I do the dishes and get back there. By morning I will have forgotten again. Alas.