We walked the dogs last Saturday! Their once weekly walk now. Dogs read signs though not books. They know when they are going for a walk before we know that we are going to take them. Schuster (I forgot how to spell his name! I wanted to write Schuey but couldn't remember the right order of vowels. Fortunately the machine has learned.) It has been so long ago since I wrote Schuster that I forgot what I was going to say.
Ah, I have a story about Simon and a caterpillar which I will have to tell later. Going to a movie, A WALK IN THE WOODS. Oh joy! A movie, a movie. Later! Much later as it turned out. As my dear mother used to say, "A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then." We saw the movie, see comments. I had a colonoscopy. Now there is a delightful morning's outing. This time I think the doctor found my missing pocketknife, to say nothing of the suppository syringe, my car keys and Simon's second collar. But enough about me.
My doctor prescribed a new constipation medicine called "lactulose." It comes in a quart bottle that has printed on the label, "BULK CONTAINER"; "NOT FOR HOUSEHOLD USE." That's when you know you have a problem!
In any case, some time ago, still in the Milky Way galaxy, Simon and I were on our usual hiking trail, bringing up the rear, also as usual (seems to be a theme today), not paying any attention to anything except ourselves and the roadside treats that Simon manages to find everywhere. My neck is so painful that I very quickly walk with my head bent to the road and my "Team USA" cap obscuring everything to the front and above me, except Simon who is always at least within sixteen feet of me, or closer. That day was no exception.
My usual view is of Simon's brown butt bouncing along in front of me. When he is off the road I keep careful watch lest he venture into the tall and dense undergrowth, where there may be snakes, vipers, nasty crawling and biting things. No one that I know of has ever seen a rattlesnake or copperhead out there, but we do go through a woods and along a creek, and I am naturally protective of my little guy, who will attack anything that moves and who spends half his time in the backyard running from tree to tree, barking at the squirrels who chitter at him from above.
[ time out. Moby Mosquito just flew between my eyes and the iPad screen, and I will not be mocked. I clapped and missed, for the large, elusive insect is a touch too clever to be taken that easily, I fear. I killed one last night and thought I had ended the quest, but I should have known. It was not the killer mosquito who had infected my leg earlier in the year. Perhaps I need a can of OFF as well as the insect-repellant, L. L. Bean mesh shirt I am wearing. Back to the adventure. ]
As I was saying Simon and I were walking along the hiking trail, just past the bridge in the woods and out the other side when I noticed him following something along the side of the blacktop. There walking down the road about two inches from the edge was a fuzzy brown caterpillar, making a straight line for something in the distance, presumably. Simon had his nose very close to the walking bug, and I was curious to see the outcome of this meeting. (Martin Buber reminds us that "real living is meeting;" Simon was trying.). I imagine Simon introduced himself, but the fuzzy brown, honey-colored caterpillar neither stopped, turned aside, nor slowed down. Undaunted, Simon sniffed the caterpillar from end to end, lifted his leg and shot a few drops on the creature which found their mark, and he sauntered on. He peed on the moving target and hit it, though he did not look back to check his work, and thus the walk continued.
Lately, during the past two weeks we changed walking places, moving from the fairly busy Stephenson Memorial Trail to the hiking trail down behind the Community School. There is still a woods, a railroad track hidden in the wilderness, and a creek that winds around, providing a little relief from the heat. "In Kubla Khan did Xanadu a stately pleasure dome decree": no such thing here, but I was wondering about where the water went and if the creek was connected to the one on the other side of the world, "through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea." Probably not, but the dogs like both of them though they are very different.
We went to the school trail last night. There was a group of four ladies and a gentleman standing on my side of a nifty little wooden bridge over the creek. Mary had just gone by with Schuster and the others; I showed up close behind and the ladies looked at us, and one of them said, "Oooh, here's another one. I grinned and said, "Yes, this one is Simon, as in Simon and Schuster! You can imagine the only things they produce." All of them looked at me as if I must be out of my mind. Mary commented in Spanish that those were the blankest looks she had ever seen on a group of human faces. What on earth is a Schuster? Let alone a Simon and Schuster? And why would you call a dog such a thing when you could call him Blackie or Brownie, Buster or Sam? Why indeed?
There was probably a Troll under the bridge, which was why they had stopped before crossing it, but we left a penney for the Troll and hurried on. The only problem with the school trail is that if the dogs do not brave the wilderness to poop, I am, I think, obligated to pick it up. I always carry plastic bags. Last night I had to use two of them and fling a third pile, Simon's, into the dense brush, using a kind of catapult effect. And who do you suppose couldn't make it into the wilderness? Simon (twice) and Schuster (once). Simon's second pile occurred when we were almost to the parking lot, and right beside a defunct drinking fountain on freshly mowed grass, of course. The most unkindest cut of all. Oh Simon.
A lady in pink was walking by and asked me how I was. I said it would be fine once I got this load dealt with. She giggled and kept on moving. The problem with picking these things up any more is that I tend to topple over fairly easily. I need something nearby to hold on to. This time the drinking fountain was close enough, and I managed, without falling down though I did teeter once, to get the offending material into a pink plastic bag, courtesy of the Herald-Leader paper delivery person. I waste (no pun intended) nothing. But then I had to carry the stuff to the nearest waste can which was about 50 yards away, without getting any on me or on anything else, always a challenge. But this time a success, though I always have a pocket full of wet ones just in case.
Schuster's emission was worthy of NASA. He never pees or poops during a walk. He will do it in the garage before we leave, he will do it in the car while we are going, he will rush outside when we get home and do it right in front of the deck so we can't miss it. Schuster, him. This time he pooped, also on freshly cut grass near a lovely wooden bench next to the sidewalk. A man and a woman with a child in their arms went by, all looking away. Schuster is supposed to be Mary's responsibility, but she stood near it, not too near it, and dithered. God only knows what she was going to do without a bag or a stick or a handful of leaves, like Eve just outside of Eden for the first time, I suppose. "Adam, what is this stuff, and what do I do?" I was never a boyscout, but I was a Tiffin boy Ranger, and always better prepared than any boyscout. "I'll get it," I brashly said last night. I swear, I did not know she could move that fast, for she achieved light speed and just disappeared from my field of vision, without a thank you, bless you, or Godspeed at all. Just gone.
Oh well. She was born on Halloween, almost seventy years ago to the month.
I went to work, sort of, trying to find a way to get down there without losing my balance and falling in it, which nearly happened on Center Street once. I put one of my folded sheets of Bounty over it, from my right pocket, always an advantage, just in case the worst happens. From the left pocket, I pulled out another plastic bag, a fruit bag, turned it inside out, put my hand down into it, praying there were no tears I had missed, covered the offending pile with my right hand while holding Simon's lead with my cane and foot, and very carefully grabbed it and stood back up, teetering wildly . OMG! Success, however. Not only that, there was another trash can another fifty yards down the trail on what must surely be called a grassy knoll. I hauled up cane and lead and off Simon and I went to the can, appropriately, eh? Dropped it down in and headed for the car, little knowing there would be one more pooper pick up in my immediate future. Before we got there, however, there was another bench way past the can, and I mention it only because I sat down for a bit to rest and to listen to the loveliest little wren singing his heart out somewhere over head and behind us. Truly, it sounded as if he were singing "Chewy, chewy, chewy! Chewy, chewy, chewy!"
The only thing that marred the rest of the evening was that Drew Lynch came in second on America's Got Talent. That just should not have been. Mary and I agreed, for once, that he should not have been there. Paul Zerdin won it, thank Goodness, but the wonderfully talented Oz Pearlman should have been first or second, along with, ha! the Professional Regurgatator, and the Craig Lewis Band. Mary and I get caught up in these things. We vote! We have standards. What was America thinking? There you have it. Now you know our guilty pleasure, which is over for another year, and it is back to The fourth season of Longmire, which delights me no end, reminding me of the TV westerns I used to watch as a kid, after we got a TV: The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Sky King, and Hopalong Cassidy. Sigh. Those were the days of yesteryear, eh? The Lone Ranger, silver bullets, Tonto, Silver as in Hi Ho Silver. The weeks didn't move fast enough then. Now the weeks have been gone fifty to sixty some years. L'chaim! Choose life!