The Coon Hound Count Down

You read that correctly. Yesterday afternoon the family of one of Major Havoc’s fellow Wolf Scouts came over to meet the dawg. They live on a farm. I’ve been there. It’s a large farm. It’s a nice farm. It’s a farm with coons and ‘possums and other critters that like to eat feed for the horses and chickens and goats. Do you know what that means? That means that they need a “Coon Be Gone.” I happen to have one that is available. I am giving her to them to use, forever. Because, I’m nice like that. Yes, Coon Hound is becoming an outside doggy, with a large area on which to run and jump and bark and hassle cattle until one of them kicks her and she decides that maybe they’re just a little too large to mess with and maybe a tad quicker than they look. We drive her to her new home tomorrow.


Sorry to be so morose. I’m trying to hide my glee sorrow.

Take My Dog, Please!

The only reason that I did not beat the coon hound within an inch of her life is because the Boss casually said, “Don’t kill her.” It was enough that I moved so quickly and forcefully that the young canine was cowering against the wall in a position of complete submission. I never hit her, and I am quite certain that her paws touched the ground at least a couple of times as I dragged her into the kitchen. She stayed as far away from me as she possibly could have for the remainder of the night, and she wore a muzzle for most of it.

My discovery of one of Captain Chaos’ slightly chewed $900 foot orthotics on the living room floor triggered the event. The Captain has worn foot orthotics for years. Keeping these expensive yet somehow aromatically attractive medical devices out of the reach of dogs has been a top priority. I don’t know what it is about the smell of feet that gets a dog so worked up that she climbed onto the kitchen table to retrieve the device. When I was a kid, we had a dog that slept with her nose in my dad’s shoes while the rest of us left the state due to the pungency of his foot aroma. Neither my brothers nor I inherited that trait (the foot aroma, not a propensity to face-plant in the old man’s foot wear) due mainly to the fact that none of us appreciate a can of Schlitz in the quantity that marked my father’s drinking career. The reason why still baffles medical science, but large quantities of alcohol created a podiatric malodorousness in my dad that thirty year's worth of sobriety cannot erase from our olfactory memory banks.  But I digress.  The pit bull used to roll in only the ripest of dead animals before returning to the house to shrieks of “Oh, my Lord, what did you get into now?!” The Big Fuzzy Dog is the sole pooch I’ve owned that seems to appreciate fresh, clean air.

I am sorely tempted to take the coon hound into a field, let her loose, and see whether or not she can outrun a bullet.

We are actively looking for a new home for The Great Mistake of 2009. The coon hound is, basically, a sweet animal. At one year old she is all puppy. She is housebroken, good with the kids and other animals, and spayed. She can also leap a chain link fence with ease, a fact that the police noted with amusement when they knocked on our door Sunday afternoon to inform us that the beast was spotted in our front yard. When I opened the door and saw the uniform I casually observed, “I see that you’ve met our dog. Do you want her?” The officer’s negative reply prompted my next question.

“Will you please shoot her?”

He wasn’t taking any of that action, either. He did take down our name and number, promising to offer the dog to any of his hunting friends.

The coon hound is free to the first family/hunter that wants her. We will drive her to her new home in any of the contiguous 48 states, Alaska, and Hawaii. She is current on her shots. This dog needs to be able to run, so very large yards, wide open spaces are needed.

Any takers? Just shoot us an e-mail.

Compliments of the Coon Hound

We quickly discovered that the new French doors we installed with the invaluable assistance of our Ward IV councilman need to be pushed shut firmly in order for the latch to catch securely. That is a skill our children have not mastered, and it did not take long before the coon hound discovered that she can push the door open with her snout and walk into the kitchen whenever she pleases. That wouldn’t be so bad if she had the decency to close the door behind her. Unfortunately, she leaves it wide open, inviting all sorts of guests into the kitchen.


I was at the computer writing last Thursday when General Mayhem walked past, headed into the kitchen.

“And what are you doing, chicken?” he asked, surprise in his voice.

Why, she was eating dog food, of course. She was eating dog food from the dog food bowl.  In our kitchen!  And she was very, very quiet.

It was all compliments of the coon hound.

The Insane Are Running Bedlam

What possesses a child to take a simple operation such as cleaning his heinie after sitting on the throne and turn it into a target skills practice session that blends Pin the Tail on the Donkey and the venerable Bean Bag Toss? My children are insane. Certifiable. And they are taking their father down with them!

I was sitting at the computer last night, minding my own business, when I caught that light, fragrant whiff of excrement. There were three dogs asleep at my feet. The Boss was on the couch behind me, listening to Major Havoc read out loud from a Pee Wee Scout book. Yes, the boy is reading chapters books. The Captain was in bed and the General was nowhere to be found. While briefly considering which dog fouled the air, I realized that it wasn’t the smell of animal dung drifting through the house that caught my attention. It was human. And if teachers would only tell high school boys and girls that when they become parents they will develop the ability to not only discern the difference between the smell of animal poop and human poop, but also the difference between each individual child’s aroma, and that this new found ability will become so ingrained that they never question how or why they are doing what they are doing, there’d be a whole lot less teenaged fornication goin’ on!

But, I digress.

It was readily apparent that I was the only person who could smell the offense. An investigation was in order. I briefly considered calling in the coon hound to track the origins of the malodorous breeze, but to her the smell I was smelling was neither new nor interesting. Considering the fact that she sniffs the canine nether regions of every dog she meets just as a matter of courtesy, and since I’ve smelled what the BFD produces, it would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that the coon hound’s tracking ability is entirely shot.

But, here I go, wandering off on another tangent.

Using the process of elimination (rimshot! - Thank you, I'll be here all week), I traced the smell to the master bathroom, the last known location of Major Havoc before he joined his mother on the couch to read a book. The floor of the bathroom was covered with little wads of toilet paper. There was foulness attached the edge of the rug and on the linoleum. It looked like someone pulled the strings of roughly a hundred plastic Champaign bottle party poopers at some sick, twisted, six-year-old’s Fourth of July celebration. For the life of me, I could not figure out how he managed to smear the things he smeared on the places that he smeared them without also tracking it through the house. So, I did the only thing that a parent can do in this situation. I asked him.

“Major, did you have an accident in the bathroom?”

“No,” he replied.

Allow me to save you from the entire conversation. Spare me the difficulty of trying to describe the gesticulations that the boy employed in attempting to explain his bathroom antics. There was nothing “accidental” in what he did. The boy decided that rather than wiping and dropping the little ball of Charminy nastiness in the toilet, it would be fun to stand up, close his eyes, and toss the wad of spent white absorbency over his shoulder and HOPE that it landed in the bowl. If it didn’t…oh well, no points for you on that shot, buddy! It was obvious from the collection on the floor that he didn’t win the kewpie doll last night. And it simply never occurred to him to pick up after himself!

From where does this insanity come?

Yeah, I spent a lot of time cleaning the bathroom last night…
　
　
　


(sigh)

From the "Things I Never Thought I'd Have to Deal With or Would Even Dream of Sharing in Public" Department...

One of my chickens taught the coon hound how to escape from our yard. "Clumsy" likes the Rose of Sharon on the other side of the fence from our back yard. She hops up onto the fence (her flight wings are clipped), hops down into the bush, and "nests" in a depression at the base of the plant. Frequently, we find her eggs in that hole in the ground. Some mornings she'll continue to explore the front yard. She turned quite a few heads last week when passing cars saw a chicken in front of our house, staring at the passing cars as intently as the drivers were staring at her. Coon Hound learned that she can climb over the fence at the same location that Clumsy does, scurry out from under the bush (without visiting the nest or depositing an egg of her own) and visit the neighborhood. I didn't realize how often she completed this maneuver until my neighbor told me today that the coon hound was barking at passing cars at 5:30 in the morning this week. We found her in the back yard each time we opened the patio door. I sure am glad we got her fixed.

So, today I constructed a lattice fence to block the egress point where the chicken and the coon hound leave the yard. It is a nice looking fence. Oddly enough, I am certain that while the new fence will keep the coon hound in the yard, it will do nothing but annoy the chicken. Clumsy is smart enough to hop up onto the gate next to the portion of fence I built, hop onto the ground on the other side, and plant her skinny little hen behind underneath the Rose of Sharon. The coon hound, surrounded in a yard by fencing that is the same height around the entire yard, appears to be entirely unaware of the fact that if she can climb over the fence near the Rose of Sharon then she can climb over the fence at any other spot in the yard. But she doesn't. Score one for the chicken.

Speaking of chickens, I've had HVAC techs in and out of the house recently to evaluate and bid on replacing our central air. For years I've been asking people who visit our house if they are afraid of dogs. Now the conversation is a tad different.

"Hi!"

"Hello. I'm Bob from the Air Conditioning place."

"Hi, Bob from the Air Conditioning place. Before you come inside, I have to ask, are you afraid of dogs?"

"No, but thank you for asking."

"Are you afraid of chickens?"

"Huh?"

"Well, I have those, too."

And they roam the yard freely, often perching on the air conditioning unit in the back yard. I'm thinking of posting "Beware of Chickens" signs around our property. You just never know what might happen, and those three birds keep pecking off their collars and rabies tags.

Since it is Saturday, I should report the results from the most recent Saturday Morning Fat Boy weigh-in. I dropped another 2.8 pounds this week, bringing the three week total to 15 pounds lost, pounds that I hope to never find. I won't be looking for them. I won't be praying to St. Anthony to help me find them. Only 47 more to lose...

Pop! Goes The Coon Hound

Yesterday, I ran into a grocery store to purchase a few items for dinner. I had Captain Chaos and Major Havoc with me. Normally, I place them in a two-seater “race car” shopping cart in order to keep them corralled while I shop. Yesterday, I allowed them to walk along with me. They ran off to the crane machine to “ooh” and “ahh” over the toys inside while I paid for our purchase. When I was finished I called to them, “Hey Mutt and Jeff, come with me.”

The Captain turned towards me and proudly announced, “I’m Jeff!”



I was surprised to read that children’s author Judy Blume is not only a supporter of Planned Parenthood, but is allowing the organization to use her name to solicit donations. She is encouraging people to say “thank you” to their moms for everything that moms do by making a donation in their mom’s name to Planned Parenthood as a Mother’s Day gift.

You read that correctly.

She thinks that the best way to say thanks to the woman who gave her life is to make a financial donation to an organization whose sole purpose appears to be killing the unborn. That logic makes my head hurt. Needless to say, there will never again be a Judy Blume book in this household. Any books that are here will be in a recycling bin tomorrow. Hopefully some company can turn the books into something useful, like toilet paper.

I am unapologetically pro-life. Readers who are pro-choice really shouldn’t waste their time or mine trying to debate the issue. They’ll get no traction. There is nothing they can say that will ever justify the intentional killing of the unborn.



I need to give a big shout of thanks to the Boss for her efforts at turning this blog site into something with a little more eye appeal. I’ve always focused on content without much regard to design. That’s why I was so thrilled when Eric Novak revamped the old blog last fall. His work was excellent. I’ve been itching for the Boss to help turn around the design of the new place, but I didn’t want to pester. Pesky little things like a job, a husband, some children and all of their extra-curricular activities have made it a little difficult for her to find the time for web design. Today she surprised and delighted me with a change that incorporated the source of much of the material for Boarding in Bedlam - the three boarders who challenge our sanity. Don’t let those smiles fool you. They’re not as innocent as they look.

Just consider the boy in the middle, Major Havoc. Just today he took his sister’s spring loaded play tunnel, squished it down to its smallest size, and called for the coon hound. As soon as the pup came up to the Major he let go of the tunnel, giggling manically as it shot up to its full six foot length. The dog scurried away, shocked and barking. As soon as he regained his composure, the Major grabbed the tunnel, squished it back down, and called for the dog again. It only took three rounds of pop-goes-the-coon-hound before the beast caught on and headed for the yard. Do they make doggie pace makers?