The Death Valley tour bus parked on a viewpoint off Badwater Road, and about half the members braved the heat to get off the bus and take in the view of the dry lake bed of Badwater Basin.
A little girl in pigtails, pointed at a moving speck far across the distant lake bed. “Daddy, what’s that?”
Her dad squinted against the brightness of the white sand, at first not seeing anything, but after a moment spotted it. “I dunno, honey.” Continue reading “The Trickster”
I have a confession to make. I am obsessed with dog poop. At times with my dog walking clients, I feel like I’m the guy driving the golf cart at the tail end of the horse parade with the shovel and barrel in back. I’ve developed a sixth sense where I know when a dog has to poop before he knows himself.
I scoop up the little gems into translucent green bags and tie them off with a knot while avoiding getting any whiff of the stink. The bags come on rolls and are sold in packs of six. Though I buy them in bulk, I’m still checking myself for bags. When I get down to one roll, I restock my vest with four more. Maybe I’m obsessed with these green bags too. Continue reading “Little Green Bags”
Sometimes when I’m on my walks with my two-legger and I see a Chihuahua, a little voice in my head will say, “There goes Pedro, stinking of beans.” It’s not my voice. It’s someone else’s because I like beans. Beans don’t stink, they smell good. Beans are food and I love food. All food. Even Costco biscuits. So it’s not even something I would think, let alone say.
Then I’ll see a Rottweiler and the little voice will say, “There goes Tyson, looking for a fight.” I’ve met plenty of friendly Rotties so I know it’s not me saying that, even if I’m the only one who hears it inside my head. Sometimes when I hear these words, I wonder if I’m sharing my head with a little racist dog, like a twin who never completely formed, except as maybe a pea-sized part of my brain. Continue reading “The Racist Pea”
The dog sits in the back of the old dented Jeep, rust showing here and there under the dark green paint. The dog’s owner took off the top the first sunny day of summer and will forget about it until the rain comes in the fall. The dog is big and rangy with long fur in the black-and-tan saddle pattern of a German shepherd, and has upright ears that point in the direction of what he’s listening to.
He pants in the shade under the purple-leafed plum tree where his owner parked the Jeep in the Fred Meyer parking lot. It’s a big lot with plenty of action. People pull into it, park their cars and go into the store while others come out of the store pushing noisy shopping carts across the broken pavement and load up the backs of their SUVs. Continue reading “Patterns”
Henry was a door-to-door salesman with a shock of bushy white hair. He’d grown up in the suburbs, knew suburbanites well and what they wanted. They’d embrace any device that made their lives easier so they could spend more time on the couch living their lives by remote. More and more of them lived by themselves. Chores no longer needed to be shared, they were automated, and what was left, like mowing the lawn, was hired out. With all this independence came loneliness, but like a blank spot in the garden was filled with a gnome, a void in a suburbanites life was filled with a dog, a little furry person to keep them company. Continue reading “Bushy Heads of Fur”
Gnawing the Bone 