Rex had that look in his eyes. I had seen that look before—it was the look that he had done something bad and knew he was going to get caught.
“Reeeeeeeeeexxx, what did you do? What are you up to? What’s going on? Why that look?”
I had decided to give him four questions, allowing him to answer any one of them. He answered none of
them. He just looked at me with those dark eyes, conveying the message of knowing he was going to get caught and scolded, or worse, maybe cut off from ice cream and Costco pizza for a month.
I fed him his dinner and decided to hunt around for the evidence.
I checked the legs of the kitchen table. On occasion he will lift his leg against a table leg to convey his displeasure with something I’ve done. Nope. Kitchen table legs were dry.
The azalea bushes in the back yard! Bet that was it. On the porch, I surveyed the back yard for signs of disruption. He will frequently rip out a few bushes, especially the azalea bushes, if he finds one of my decisions to be incongruent with his worldview. Bushes were fine. His squeezie toy was pretty tattered, but that was from usual wear and tear.
Maybe he had made another tunnel to Millie’s yard. I have always allowed him two tunnels: his “main” tunnel and a backup tunnel should the main tunnel suffer from collapse or cave-in. In checking the fence line, I found no signs of his undertaking another tunnel project.
Hmmmmmmm. I wandered into the living room again to check the sofa pillows. In the past, when in the process of actively hating me for some indiscretion, he would destroy a sofa pillow. His incisors could lacerate a sofa pillow in the blink of an eye. Once one went missing and was never found. My conclusion: he ate it to hide the evidence. (Once my wheelbarrow went missing, but I couldn’t envision his eating a whole wheelbarrow.)
Later that evening I sat on the couch watching a PBS special (“Rust: Friend or Foe?”). Rex sat in the corner of the living room and continued to look guilty. The sofa legs! Once he had gnawed off an entire sofa leg because I made him wear a rhinestone collar in the Pet Parade. I got down on my hands and knees and checked the remaining three legs—the missing leg having been replaced by a brick. Nope. Nothing amiss. I did find half a dozen dust bunnies, but decided to leave them until my biannual vacuuming.
I also spotted a pair of my underwear under there. That was either a result of my four-keg Fourth of July party, or the lost weekend when Kimmie the CPA brought over those six bottles of tequila. Next to the underwear I noticed a bottle cap and two pairs of handcuffs, so it was probably from the Kimmie incident. (She’s in AA now; I’m still in denial.)
“Rex. Rex, what did you do? I’ve looked everywhere. You don’t look like that unless you’ve done something bad. Fess up.”
Rex did not fess up. He lowered his head, looked up through his eyebrows in a form of canine contrition.
Nothing from Rex except an almost unnoticeable quiver. That worried me. The last time he quivered was the time he pooped on the sofa during the Super Bowl party. That was bad enough, but Stinky Felix didn’t notice it—he doesn’t have a very good sense of smell (neither do I) and he plopped down in the couch smack dab in the middle of it. The scene was very disruptive, and most of my guests left except Kimmie, who was passed out in my bathtub in her underwear.
I checked the spare bedroom before I went to bed. Nothing out of place; the Bowflex, treadmill, weight machine, and the Pilates Reformer all covered in a fine layer of dust from non-use.
“Come on, Rex, let’s head for bed. I’ve got to get up early to help Del and Estelle set up their Amway stall at the flea market. Coming to bed?”
Rex stayed in the living room, which was uncustomary. As I walked around to the nightstand on the far side of my bed to set the alarm clock, I stepped in something that had cooled but was still very wet and slippery.
“RRRRRREEEEEEEEXXXXXXXXX!!!!!!!!”
***
Tom and / or Rex can be reached at burns100@earthlink.net.
