How exciting! This morning we met a celebrity! It was within the first couple of minutes of our run, when Bodie caught a strong scent. When Bodie catches a scent, she looks like she’s in fast forward. Her legs move faster, her head moves from side-to-side faster than you think that anyone can smell, and she changes directions faster than the eye can see. When she is excited, she doesn’t turn in S’s, she turns in Z’s.
When Bodie gets excited, I get excited too. It takes me a beat to figure out which way she’s going, which is why sometimes I just stand there and bark until I know where she’s going. This time she was muttering something about, “It’s Phil! It’s Phil!” “Who’s Phil?!” I barked at the top of my voice. Before she could answer me, ZOOP! she turned on a dime and darted into the weeds. I took off after her shouting “WAIT A SECOND! WHO’S PHIL?!?! I WANT TO MEET PHIL!” Mom was screaming something too, but we ignored her. Whatever a Phil is, she surely wouldn’t be interested. She’d probably just be scared of him.
Phil is a ground hog. We almost got him. We were further into the weeds than we’d ever been before, but our leashes stopped just short. Then, suddenly our leashes yanked us backward out of the weeds. It was like we were pouncing, but in rewind.
“Mom, what are you doing laying on the ground like that?” I asked. She was lying on her back in the grass just outside the weeds, staring at the moon. I thought was a very strange thing to do indeed. “Are you sure that there isn’t any goose poop or pee mail in that spot? I didn’t check it before you lay down…” I said. Maybe she was trying to crawl into the weeds and meet Phil too? “WHAT THE DUCK, BODIE?!?!?!” Mom growled in her Monster voice, picking herself up and brushing herself off. She seemed really mad. “Phil’s not a duck, Mom. He’s a ground hog…” I tried to explain. “We almost met him before we went on rewind.”
Mom ignored me while she untangled us all from the leashes. Then she tried to run away. Bodie was still pinned to the spot, looking longingly at the weeds where Phil lived. Eventually the leash stretched to its limit, and Bodie was dragged away. She kept looking back and straining against the leash. “But he was going to tell me how much time was left in winter…” she whined. “You live in California, Bodie. It’s going to be 70º today,” Mom grumbled.
Mom must have been real grouchy, because that’s not true. Sometimes it gets real cold here. Just last month it was THIRTY-FOUR DEGREES before the sun came up. If that’s not cold, I don’t know what is…
-Punxsutawney Oscar
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