A Sense of Occasion

A. had to go out of town Friday and Saturday to attend another one of those pesky Continuing Legal Education seminars. That means he missed all the woodchuck excitement.

Oh, but wait! The excitement was not yet over.

Yesterday afternoon I heard the excited hunting yelping. Again. So I went out to investigate. Again. And I found the dogs frantically digging and circling the foundation of the shed that we use as a garage. Leda and Otty were on the outside sniffing at a hole in the stones, and Mia was inside the shed, scrabbling at the floor. The corner Mia was in has plywood laid down to make a more or less flat surface, and there is an old desk there where we store things like barbed wire and tie wire.

I couldn't move the plywood, because of the desk on top of it. And so there the dogs were again, with something trapped in an inaccessible place and no help coming from me.

Luckily for them, just at that moment, the fourth member of their hunting pack arrived home. The one who has opposable thumbs and can operate things like guns. And pry bars.

My first words to A. were, "Welcome home! The dogs have something cornered and I can't help them." I wanted him to know that we missed him and that his presence at home is appreciated, you see. Isn't that the best way to welcome someone home after a trip? Right.

A. being the kind of guy he is, he didn't say anything and instead just went into the shed and pried the plywood up a few inches with his pry bar. Mia squirmed into the opening and backed out with an animal in her mouth.

You'll never guess what it was.

Oh wait. DID you guess woodchuck? Yup, it was a woodchuck. I don't know that it was the same woodchuck that got away the day before, but if it was, natural selection took care of that stupid woodchuck and it will no longer have the opportunity to pass on its sub-normal survival instincts.

For the rest of the day whenever I went outside, I saw each of the dogs in turn skulking around with the increasingly floppy woodchuck carcass. Yum.

A.'s adventure in the corner of the shed convinced him that what he really should be doing today is clearing out that shed and pulling it about nine inches to the north, lest it all collapse entirely. It's at least a hundred years old--you'd be listing to one side, too.

So he's spending Father's Day using his Come Along to pull the shed straight and then brace it with some kind of framework of lumber. I'm hazy on the details. Which is why he didn't ask for my help.

I did take out some porterhouse steaks and made some maple custard, so at least we'll have a suitably festive holiday dinner. But that's about the extent of the celebrations here.

Laundry on Mother's Day and construction on Father's Day. That's the way it goes at Blackrock.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads in the crowd. Here's hoping your day is more relaxing than A.'s.