Rex and I were out for a walk around the block. We came upon my neighbor, Jay Throckmorton, walking across his front yard. He had a coil of wire slung over his shoulder and under his arm. He appeared to be on a mission.

“Mornin’, Jay.”

“Mornin’, Tom. Mornin’, Rexie.”

“Ah, Jay, what you up to?”

“Gophers.”

“Gophers?”

“Yep. Gophers. Making my life miserable for years. Tryin’ something new.”

As Rex and I walked over to a gopher mound in Jay’s front yard, Jay unslung his wire bandoleer.

Rex sniffed the gopher mound, and Jay squatted down and explained to Rex his latest endeavor to rid the

yard of gophers, not unlike Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry explaining to Opie how to put a worm on a fishing hook.

“And that, Rexie, is how I’m going to kill that dad-gum gopher.” Jay’s plan was to fill the hole with acetylene gas and attach an electric match to the gopher’s bunker and blow him to smithereens. Rex sniffed the hole again and looked up to me. I could see the wheels turning in little Rexie’s golf-ball-sized brain.

As Jay unrolled the copper wire and stuck one end at the mouth of the gopher hole, he explained his past failures. “Tried the garden hose several times. Soil’s too sandy, and they build a very deep hole in their burrows that let water escape the tunnel, which it does. Great engineers. Tried Map gas—welder’s gas—but that dissipated too quickly. Tried mothballs. That didn’t work. Supposed to, you know. Doesn’t work. Nope.”

Rex went around to Jay’s side yard. I called out to Rex, “Hey, we’re going to have some heavy-duty blasting here in a minute, Rex. Get back here.” I heard Rex barking soft little “woofs.” “Rex, get back here.” No Rex.

Jay continued his history of gopher assaults as I envisioned a scene from Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. “Then I tried a guillotine device that showed promise but didn’t deliver a victory; the gophers won that time, too.”

Jay’s wife Ellen came out on the front porch with a tray of lemonade, wearing a pensive smile. “He never gives up.”

“Mornin’, Ellen.”

“Mornin’, Tom. I thought I saw Rexie out here a minute ago. Have some lemonade.”

“He’s around in the side yard.”

I went to the side yard and saw Rex digging furiously. “Rex! What the hell are you doing?” He shot me an indignant look for distracting him.

I was about to reprimand him again, but stopped as I noticed the gopher poke his head up out of the bottom of Rex’s crater. The gopher pulled himself up and out into the open as Rex bent down and picked the gopher up in his mouth. Rex, gopher in mouth, walked over to the side fence, shimmied under it, and returned to Jay’s yard in a second—without the gopher.

“Hey, Tom,” yelled Jay. “Come back over here; don’t want you to get hurt when this baby goes off. Bring Rex, too.”

I picked up Rex and returned to ground zero. I sipped lemonade and held Rex under my other arm.

Jay’s eyes flashed with maniacal evil as he set the electric match just inside the gopher hole and sealed it shut.

We all stood at attention as he did a theatrical countdown. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . ONE!”

Kabbbbbbooooooooooommmm!

Jay smiled, sensing final victory. “No gopher could live through that! Ha ha ha!”

I ran to the side yard, and, seeing the crater Rex had made, said, “Holy smokes Jay! Come look at this crater. Must have been a gas pocket. Must a’ blown that critter sky-high!”

Jay and Ellen ran over to witness the huge, gaping hole. I sat Rex down and he sniffed the hole and shimmied under the fence.

He returned in a moment, wagging his tail. I knew why he was wagging his tail. He knew why he was wagging his tail. Jay? He thought his gopher troubles were over.

* * *

Tom and / or Rex can be reached at burns100@earthlink.net.

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.

VALENTINE’S FOR MILLIE

“Rex, it’s time to think about a Valentine’s gift for Millie. She’s your main squeeze, so we have to get an appropriate gift for her. Last year’s Valentine was a dud, if you recall. We got her a cow bone to gnaw on, remember? Half a femur, I believe. She felt the ‘cow’ implication was a comment on her size. Females don’t like any gift with the word ‘cow’ involved, Rex. The fact that she’s an English sheepdog and is ‘big boned’ didn’t help, either.”
My canine companion sat next to me on the couch as our conversation progressed.
“I imagine clothing is a bad idea, too. Anything she could squeeze into would have to be a Large or XLarge, and you would just lose more yardage with that, as well.”
Rex looked as if he was pondering the possibilities, but in fact, he was probably wondering how long it was until dinnertime.
“Now Rex, I’ve had my share of Valentine’s with women over the years. It can be a treacherous slope, pal. I once bought a girl a book on Proper Tire Rotation and a set of crescent wrenches. She seemed ungrateful. I was hurt. One word led to another and before I knew it, she kicked me out of her trailer. Lived in my truck until I met Dakota. I wised up and got Dakota a matching can opener-toaster set. She LOVED it. She let me use them to make dinner for her every night I lived with her. Both nights. I guess she could only stand so much canned Dinty Moore Beef Stew and Pop Tarts.”
Rex seemed to take interest in this leg of my marathon, but I realized he was just stretching.
“See, the thing to remember Rex, is . . .” Rex had nodded off. A tactic he frequently uses as hint for me to shut up and feed him. I ignored him. “See, the thing you have to remember is to get a gift that truly reflects your feelings for Millie. Do you want a gift that says, ‘I will love your forever,’ or maybe something less committal, such as ‘Want to look for cat turds together?’ or maybe something more casual, such as, ‘Want to sniff each other’s butts?’”
Rex had rolled over onto his back, wagging his tail, indicating I should interrupt the riveting conversation and scratch his belly.
“No, Rex. Listen, we’ve got to get this Valentine’s thing off your To Do list and not wait until midnight of February 13th, like I did for my girlfriends. The good cards are gone by then. Once I had to alter the last card in the drugstore-a Get Well card-into a Valentine’s card. It was in Spanish, too.”
Rex had put his paws over his eyes-a feeble attempt to close me out of his world.
“Knock it off, Rex. We’ve got to get a gift for Millie. My God, she has everything a guy could want! Silky hair, bright eyes, pleasant disposition. Shoot, if she wasn’t a dog, I’d ask her out myself!”
Rex uncovered his eyes and stared at me. I think I had crossed a line with him I shouldn’t have.
“Well, you know. I was just speaking figuratively. Don’t get your hackles up. How about a nice dog tag? ‘With Love from Rex?’ ‘Rex and Millie Forever?’ ‘You’re a Fine Canine?’ Hmmm?”
Rex was hanging his head upside down over the edge of the couch. His chops hung open in total abandonment. He half-closed his eyes and was making choking noises.
“Forget it, Rex. I know you’re faking it. You’re not choking and I’m not going to give you the Heimlich maneuver like I did in the McDonald’s parking lot. Behave yourself. I’m trying to help you. Oh, forget it.”
I got up and left him to his silly diversions. He could get his own gift for Millie. I’ve got to hand it to him, though-at least he has a girlfriend. Me? Maybe next year