When You're as Tall as the Grass

When you're only as tall as the grass, you see the world very differently. Everything is a threat, but everything is very interesting, too. When you are supposed to stay inside a fenced area but discover that you are able to crawl under the fence and your companion is not able to to it, this becomes a behavior that seems to define and validate your very being. It must be done more and more often

When Miss Sadie does this, she usually stays just on the outside of the orange snow fence we have strung across the back yard in lieu of the fence we were promised 18 months ago by the landlord when we moved in. (By now, only Harry Houdini can hold his breath better than us.) However, just the other day, the fence contractors were here for a couple of minutes, measured a couple of things out back, and then disappeared again into the ether. Our experience tells us that the Second Coming will probably occur before we see them again. In the meantime, the problem of Sadie getting out all the time just keeps on keeping on.

I sawed up an old rake handle into four quasi-equal lengths, then used my Bowie Knife to chop points onto the pieces, thus rendering them useful as tent pegs, vampire threateners, and fence securers. I'd have used a hatchet, but I don't have one of those. I do, however, have a $12 Bowie Knife which did yeoman service very creditably as a hatchet. Colonel Bowie, himself, despite the severe ventilation he experienced at the hands of Santa Ana's troops at the Alamo, would no doubt have smiled to see his famous invention perform so well in a practical situation.

I pounded the four new pegs into what I thought were the weakest spots at the bottom of the fence. Sadie found new weak spots. The next thing we knew, she was next door chastising Sister Lewis at the top of her already very high voice. Fortunately, Sister Lewis, an elderly lady who has seen a lot of life, thought the whole thing was delightful and kept trying to win Sadie over. She has her work cut out for her. Sadie fled from my approach for the first 5 or 6 months we had her.

Sadie weighs 3 pounds. This does not inspire confidence in anyone, even an obstreperous little dog. When she has gotten out and we call her, she tries to run away. But Sheryl has trained her to understand the word "sit" quite well. What she does on this command is not so much sitting as it is just flopping down and hugging the earth. If it's been a while since I've mowed, she can almost disappear.

Mico has learned to accept and even enjoy her. But, as an amateur portrait photographer, I think I sense a loss of enthusiasm on his part. He seems to feel that he is only the support staff these days. The real star, so to speak, is Sadie. I think he sees himself as the male dancer who holds the prima ballerina aloft for everyone to gaze at her beauty while his shoulder joints slowly deteriorate. Mico just doesn't pose as enthusiastically as he did when he was an "only dog." But there are times when he tries to get back into the old spirit of the thing, so I still get occasional good shots of him, too.

We fear that Mico might be turning old in the same way that I am. I.e., he seems to be more curmudgeonly all the time. When baby Akira would not leave him alone last night, he growled and snapped at her, for which behavior he was put in the slammer (kennel) for a while. But I felt a little sorry for him. He's about 50 in dog years, and he spent his first several years in a largely child-free environment. Tonight, while we were walking around a couple of neighborhood blocks, a Boston Terrier ran up to us. We all four froze, the canine half of our crew doing all the obligatory sniffing and tensing up of the hind legs. Then, for no apparent reason and on a signal which was not detectable to us, Mico and the Boston Terrier began to fight. Sheryl jerked Mico up above the danger by his harness and leash. The terrier's owner came out, all apologies, and blamed its behavior on its background as a pound dog. I don't know... Anyway, he seemed like a nice guy.

He's half Japanese and his surname is Larsen. That gave me a bit of a twitch. As pleasant as he was, I just couldn't find anything about him that reminded me of Vikings, longboats, or raiding England for its gold and daughters in the eighth and ninth centuries. We had spoken briefly with his mother just before the dogs got all bellicose. She had the most charming accent. He says she was born (in 1926) and raised in Tokyo. I, of course, had to ask whether she remembered the fire bombings. Yes, she remembered all of it. You know, Tokyo was just as badly damaged as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it was done with conventional incendiary bombs from the new, state-of -the-art B-29. Mrs. Larsen actually told her son that she remembers being chased down a street by a P-51 Mustang. She was able to look back and see the American pilot's face through the canopy! And yet, in 1951, she married an American soldier and has live here ever since except for a few visits back home.

But back to Sadie. Do not doubt that she knows that what she's doing is wrong and absolutely forbidden. I've actually seen her look over her shoulder for us before she starts poking around for weak spots under the fence. It's all a joke to her. I get pretty frustrated, but she seems to know that weighing three pounds and having the face of an Ewok is a get-out-of-jail-free card. I don't anticipate any repentance on her part any time soon. And by soon, I mean during this lifetime.