Traveling Mormons and Canine Cricket

This is what happens when you dangle a brownie over three canine hooligans.

Attention.

Discipline.

Concentration.

It's great. With an unlimited supply of brownies, I could have these monsters trained in no time flat.

**********

My dear neighbor Jenny works an ungodly amount of hours at the weekends. Because she is kind enough to babysit the Super Duper Cooper Pooper Puppy for me on Wednesdays, when I'm being tortured in Improv classes, I've started taking Jeff and Mutt...er.... Casper and Copper for her on Saturdays.

It's been a great relationship. The dogs wear each other out. And us too, I think.

The Saturday before last, when I was still fighting off the Bronchial Infection from Hell, I dragged myself over to Jenny's apartment, and brought the dogs back here. Then I promptly crawled back into bed. To my astonishment, all three dogs joined me, and it wasn't long before we found ourselves deep in the throes of Nap.

It's good to be in the throes of Nap.

Particularly when you're surrounded by three extremely cuddly puppies. Casper lay by my head, Copper by my feet, and Cooper stretched up my side. I really do love napping with dogs. It comes in only sightly behind having a sleeping baby on my chest in the race of "Favorite Ways to Sleep."

It's also, I found out the hard way, kind of like sleeping with a personal security system.

There we were, in the throes of Nap, when THEY came. Who is they, you ask?

The Traveling Mormons, of course.

Three knocks on my front door and the monsters sprang into action. They barked. They snarled. They grumbled about being woken up. They trampled me as they leapt from the bed. It's a hell of a way to wake up from a nap. I thought that perhaps the Apocalypse had come, with all of the excitement.

As it turned out, it was only people coming to warm me that the Apocalypse would be coming at some unforeseeable, unpredictable time in the near future and that I should read their book if I want to know how to deal with this.

Kind of makes me want to answer the door with a bucket of water next time.

"Hi, nice to meet you! I'm a Baptist!" *Pours bucket of water over unsuspecting Traveling Mormon* "Oh, I'm sorry - you didn't want my religion dumped on your head? Keep that in mind, wouldya?"

Alternately, I could get something other than a wreath for my front door. Perhaps a sign that says, "Brains Served Here" with a picture of a decapitated Zebra?

With the three hellhounds barking at the door, that might just do it.

What can I say? I'm sure the Traveling Mormons were lovely people. I just don't like being woken up.

**********

This Saturday, the boys decided to try a new sport. I'm happy to report that they've taken up Cricket.

Not the weird Australian "Kind of like Baseball, but without any bases and a weird shaped bat" Cricket, but the "There's a bug in the house and I must chase it" Cricket.

Honestly, I prefer the canine version.

Even after two months in Australia, I never did manage to figure out what they were supposed to be doing in human Cricket. Sometimes they'd swing at the ball. Sometimes they wouldn't. And if they hit it, sometimes they'd run, and sometimes they wouldn't. And when they ran, they went back and forth in a manner that didn't make any sense at all.

This part is also typical of the canine version of Cricket. At least on the part of the cricket himself. 

Admittedly, it was amusing watching Cooper, Copper, and Casper chase the bug. He hopped - they hopped. He played dead, they sniffed him. He got up and hopped some more - they said, "but I thought you were dead?"

I shouldn't complain.

They're really refining their tastes.

It started out with Opossum chasing. That was Copper. He picked it up and shook it until it gave up. He's lucky it didn't bite him on the nose.

Then there was the frog killing. Poor Dylian consumed an entire frog. Poorer Una had the pleasure of cleaning up its mangled body when Dylian threw it up on her carpet later that evening. Casper has determined that frog decapitation is great fun.

I TOLD you they were a gang. And they're getting dangerous. Doesn't sociopathic behavior always start with mutilation of small animals?

This cricket survived, I think. Cooper only wanted to sniff it.

Crickets smell good you know.

I guess.

*Bobs