My people miss the obvious. Sometimes they miss eight hundred pounds of obvious.
Take for example a couple of mornings ago. I awoke at the crisp hour of four. I could smell trouble and got one of my people to get up from his warm bed and let me out. Something was afoot out there and its my job to defend the gardens.
After a quick patrol of the perimeter, and a full id of the interloper, I took up my spot in the middle of the main vegetable garden and began my warning howl. In a word, I told that big shaggy creature to BACK OFF.
I continued this for a couple of hours. My people did not appreciate what I was doing. Rousted from their beds before the usual times, they gave me frosty looks and called out to the gardens to me, requesting in no uncertain terms that I cease and desist in my efforts.
Can you imagine? It’s just so hard to be me. Sometimes they so don’t GET what I do.
Finally, four long hours into my defense of the property, one of them came out to see WHY I would not leave my post and spotted the very beast I had been protecting them from since before dawn.
A moose.
It really irked me that when they all ran out into the gardens to look at him, their ruckus got the moose to leave, whereas all my howling had only kept him slightly at bay.
Then they had the nerve to grouse that they hadn’t really gotten a good look. I had been alerting them for what felt like a small eternity that the big guy was stripping all the apple trees of buds. They had hours to get a good look, if only they had LISTENED to me.
Fast forward to the next morning. I smell moose again so I get up for my dawn patrol and set up my howl center in the Cherokee Trail of Tears Garden, as close to the big guy’s razor sharp hoofs as I feel comfortable. My people come out to take a look, but it’s a cursory, careless one. They don’t see the moose. He is the size of a small barn and they miss him. I keep barking until my two people that go to school every day come out to warm up their car.
FINALLY they notice the moose right in the apple trees next to the barn looking for any buds he missed the last few nights. Again, the whole crew comes out to watch him, congratulating themselves as if they have just discovered fire or the electric turbine engine.
What am I? Chopped Liver?
One of them takes a picture of the moose. Not one of them thinks that maybe they should take a picture of me too after my heroic defense of the place.
This morning I am on strike. The moose can eat whatever tree buds are alive out there and I am just going to stay on my couch and let him. How it irks me that my people seem more pleased to see me asleep on the couch this morning than out on duty.
It is no easy gig to be a dog.
