Val Seems To Have Fallen Into a Poodle-ish Trap

You know how when it rains, it pours? Like last week here in Backroads. If you live in an arid zone, ask the little Morton Salt girl what that means.

I know other people have it a lot worse off than Thevictorians. But lately one incident after another has cropped up, and Val's coping mechanisms are about to SPROING like the springs of a faulty cartoon timepiece. We won't get into particulars, but suffice to say I wouldn't wish these events on a freeloading trespasser.

The final straw today, the camel-back-breaking dried stalk, was a actually a pile. A pile of excrement.

The Pony went out for a dip in Poolio this afternoon, with the heat index approaching 105, temps in the 90s, high humidity. He changes in the laundry room off the kitchen, exits through the laundry room door, walks along the back portion of the wraparound porch past the dog dishes, and climbs over the rail and down to the deck of Poolio. He's not an infant. He can swim on his own. It's not like he's diving into the Marianas Trench. But even so, he's my baby. After a half hour or so, I go to check on him.

Of course I don't hike up 13 stairs and take his route. No. I leave my dark basement lair, go past Genius's electronic graveyard, between the pool table and my grandma's piano, through the workshop, and out the basement door across the concrete pad, over the mostly-flat creek rocks Hick has used as paving stones, to stand beside the steps up to the deck, where I can see The Pony. But not today.

The Pony must have come inside the house at the same time I was going out the basement door, because I did not see or hear him. Not that I was concentrating on his location so much. I pulled back the springy bar lever thing that locks the basement door, and stepped out. I knew immediately that something was amiss. My left Croc did not so much slap down heel first on the leaf-covered concrete as it gooshed. Gooshed!

MY HEEL SLID SEVERAL INCHES ON A TURD! A TURD!

Dear me! I knew the minute I started skating that if had to be a turd! The smell wafted slowly up to my nose height in the dank humidity. I didn't want to look. But I couldn't look away. A TURD! From a pile of turds! I hobbled across those paving rocks to the grass, calling weakly for The Pony. Who was nowhere around. I scraped my red Croc heel seven ways to Sunday. Got back on the biggest flat rock. Grabbed the wooden stair rail. Took off that Croc for inspection. Whew! That damp muddy grass was a great turd-remover!

I informed Hick just before supper. You know. So he could fully appreciate the job that lays ahead of him. All he needs is a big flat blue plastic snow shovel, much like the one he used to swing like a bat at the banty rooster that jumped at him every evening with talons aimed for his ample belly. One scoop, and he could haul that pile of turds across the yard to the woods, where he could fling them to fertilize the forest. That will provide more leaves to die and dry out and float up to the basement door for future turd-leaving.

Hick blames my sweet, sweet Juno. I think not. She never goes around there. In fact, when she saw me turd-scraping my left Croc, she stood up on the back porch and barked at me through the rails. Like she does in the mornings when I'm trying to sleep.

I blame that neighbor poodle dog. It has been loose again several times.