Rats Among the Ruins.

I want to tell you a story. I have lots of stories because I board dogs. I love dogs. I board them at my house. Don’t get me wrong I don’t keep them in kennels; I keep them in my living room and my bedroom.

Their favorite room is the kitchen I think, when I’m cooking, of course, or maybe it’s under the dining room table when my family and I are eating dinner. With two boys eating meals, there are always spills and food landing on dog heads.

Moondoggie the rat-chaser

Actually, food never lands on my dog’s head—she just catches it and eats it before gets near her head.

Besides loving dogs, I also love to garden. The problem is the two don’t mix—dogs and gardens—they don’t mix at all.

I was inspecting the only part of my garden that I consider to be filled in and planted the way I like it—a huge raised bed attached to the side of my house.

I was almost finished with this part of my garden. There’s no dirt visible—this is what I consider finished, if you can’t see dirt. To my horror, I noticed a cement column with a cement container on top had fallen over, taking with it a fuchsia tree, a princess plant, and a couple of azaleas on it’s way down.

I couldn’t figure out what had happened.

I happened to be with a friend of mine. When my shock wore off I walked toward the side door of my house. I was standing at the bottom of the steps of my side door deck.

Through the corner of my eye, I saw my dog followed by a dog I was dog-sitting, Willie (part lab, part freight train) both jump into the raised bed. I turned to tell them to get out when something came hurtling from the raised bed towards me.

I thought it was a ball; something that one of the dogs had grabbed and lost their grip on sending it flying in my direction.

I was wrong.

This hurtling object, which appeared to be brown and a little bigger than my hand, (I have big hands) flew at me and landed on my leg. Or should I say grabbed onto my leg. It grabbed onto my leg and then ran down my leg, over my foot and under my porch.

I realized then that it was a rather large rat and it had just been on my leg—I screamed like a little girl.

My girlfriend just stared with incredulity at my leg.

I suspect that she was still having trouble understanding what she had just seen.

I turned and told the dogs to go after the rat, which had run to a space under the deck, which was large enough for my dog. Instead of running after the rat, my dog turned on her paw and tore back into my garden with the Labrador freight train behind her.

Willie the Labra-train

The mystery of the toppled cement column was solved.

The rat, however, remains at large.

Comments

[Rich]

I love your new blog.
I love you.

[Chigiy Edson]

Thank you for supporting me dear. xox

[AS]

LOVE THIS!!!

[Chigiy Edson]

Hi Amie Sue
I'm glad you like it. It is really fun to write and I have A LOT of material.

[Farmer Ben]

This is Fun... Gonna write a story about how you and the rat become friends, how he and you plant even rows of gardenias, and at night how they court, snuggled together beside the camp fire?