UNITED STATES—My “master” has conceived a new life rule #77.3 – If you’re feeling handy, and it’s a wonderful sunny yet cool day, table that feeling for a while.
This fine Wednesday he was feeling quite handy and itching to do something. Reducing the humpback of the bougainvillea that eternally threatens to swallow up the fence, roof, and finally the azure dome of the sky itself seemed like just the right thing to do. He grabbed the small pruning shears. As befits taming this poetry-evoking botanical beast, the bougainvillea, my “master” held his gaze upward, to the tangled crosshatch of thorny branches, some still live and others bone dry.
Par for the course, the bougainvillea extracted its requisite drop of blood from his forearm. Meanwhile, his attention ought’ve been directed at the ground, as well as the sky. It was there that his Converse All-Star clad feet came into contact with a squishy substance there deposited by me, the naughty pit-bull lab, known to scare the bejesus out of a humanoid soul or two, with my overzealous leap and nip.
The recipients of my unbounded love obeyed the instinct to run for the hills. Hence, my placement in the canine witness protection programs and the assumption of a new identity.
My “master” had a rude awakening, after trimming the bougainvillea. It was heralded by that unmistakable, rich fragrance of doggie defecation. He blurted out a hearty f-bomb. And then connected his ungloved fist, now drenched in bit of forearm blood, extracted by thirsty thorns, against his forehead. He looked at myriad black rubber diamonds of the black rubber soles of the Converse All Stars high tops laced to his right foot.
“Bloody ‘ell,” he muttered. “Luna Luna Luna,” he cried out in wounded tones that would not’ve been out of place in. a high school production of Streetcar Named Desire.
The fury was there, alright, but the “master” has been around the block enough times to know that to give full vent to that fury would be to relinquish his superpowers of calm and taciturnity. Were he to unleash that vocal fury, he might well damage his vocal cords. Which would not be nice. On top of that, he might spend the next three days berating himself for losing his cool.
So, he leaned down and gently patted little old me, Luna, on the top of my head.
“Good girl,” he said in a calm, relaxed voice. He humbly sought a a short dry bougainvillea twig, perfect to clear the brown matter from the grooves of his Converse shoe.
“Luna Luna Luna,” he muttered. “What are we going to do with you? With me?”
To be continued…
