UNITED STATES—In the pleasant gloom, a reprieve from the sun, that mercilessly beams down on paradise from above, my master grows careless, if not carefree. Basking in the gently sullen sky of his infancy in Central California. Just last night he stepped into a mess that could’ve been easily prevented by using the flashlight on his phone. It wasn’t a total disaster, easily rubbed off by firm grinding of his shoeheel against leafy debris and dirt that gather round the stepping stones.
The cyber flashlight came into play to confirm the thoroughness of the job, which required a good deal of ankle grease. Drat, dad burn it, the master fumed after an initial profane outburst. Then he mused:
When will phones be equipped with a stench sensor?
Much he has to ponder. Like if it is now time to ditch my alias, hastily assumed. After some hapless visitor to my domicile suffered a ruptured pancreas. Or so the offended party claimed, and without revealing their cards, begin sniffing around, with a mutual acquaintance, with a question that made the master’s blood freeze.
“Does he have insurance?”
Now the master has a lot on his plate. And this question with its veiled meaning was relayed immediately to him by said mutual acquaintance. This sharing of this tidbit not only threw Luna’s master into a tailspin but also revealed great insensitivity on the part of this self-appointed town crier. Yes, indeed.
It was widely known by every soul with good hearing in the local recreation center (which had always been a little piece of heaven for my master) that Randy was expecting a big payday after falling into a garbage bin and unable to escape from the dank prison before the jaws of a garbage truck grabbed it and hoisted him up and headfirst into the maw already collected.
It is the sort of case that merited a windfall. A greater champion of a just and lucrative outcome, given the circumstances of the case, was my master. He truly hoped for the best, as his old table-tennis partner started to behold the fortune that was due him. Things did not go quite as they should have with one of the premiere billboard barrister.
The old table tennis partner was back to square one. Sniffing around for a new hope, to replace the mirage of the previous long dreamed of, banked on and ultimately chimeric jackpot. The matter of the “ruptured spleen” pushed poor master of me, Luna, the alleged culprit, to insanity’s gate.
The only relief now was to keep on trucking. Drink a lot of coffee. Use the phone flashlight when it was dark out. And to avoid those maddening, squishy unexpected encounters of his shoes with the loose poops of Luna and baby Deville, cut way down on the doggies’ portions of bananas and peanut butter which can be ingested by both canine’s and humans. They, too, can be the source of the slimy, mushy, odiferous gifts we’ve been laying on the walkway.
Of course, it is still amusing, now and again, to see the master blow up due to the occasional misstep.
To be continued…Photos.app
