A Memorial Day Surprise!

One of the biggest fears we all have as parents is that our kids grow up somehow deficient and with no moral compass.  I am blessed in that both my girls have turned into grownups with empathy and a strong sense of right and wrong.

I wish I could say the same for my sons!

This morning, as is my wont, I arose at 7:30pm on another beautiful day here in South Florida, and sleepily put on my shorts and T-shirt.  My wife was silently dozing as I closed the bedroom door and was being led by my "son" Cody (100lb Labrador Retriever), toward the back door and outside for his morning constitutional.

He has always been a pretty regular guy, albeit with some rather strange bowel preferences for a dog.  He really doesn't like the grass very much, so as we amble down the brick paver driveway, when the urge hits him, he gingerly puts his front paws only as far onto the grass as necessary to delude himself into thinking that he is completely off the driveway.  Then he assumes the position, and lo and behold,  50% of the time, his morning deliverance winds up on the bricks.  This was one of those mornings.

I had passed him by on my way to the end of the driveway to retrieve the morning paper.  I bent down to pick it up and when I turned around, I noticed that he was still giving it all he had, and finally after some extra effort to expell what looked like something foreign trapped in the deposit, which is not by any means unusual, he completed the task.  I realized that I had come all the way down the driveway without my trusty pooper rake, and needed to go back to the garage to get it.  Starting back up the drive, as I glanced over at the 'challenge' waiting for me on the side of the drive I noticed something unusual sticking up out of the 'bowels' of the pile, so to speak.  Upon closer examination I was shocked to realize that I was seeing the number 10 sticking up on a green piece of paper!  As I gaped in horror, I saw that there was yet another piece of paper with a 5 on it at another spot in the pile, and also what looked like a picture of the father of our county peeping at me from beneath a rather brown smudge.

I stared at it for a moment or two not able to believe what was before my eyes!  It suddenly dawned on me that my concern, only yesterday, for the sudden disappearance of several bills that were laid out on the kitchen counter to dry after they got soaked when I jumped into the water with my wallet was now justified and explained!

What a cruel epiphany to discover that your dog has eaten your money!  I tried to imagine how he would have been able to a) know the money was there, and b) get at it by snatching it off the five foot counter.  Even for a Labrador, the amount of effort to get it was beyond his physical capability.  That's when I was horrified to realize that he must have had a co-conspirator in this fiendish plot.  Meese the cat!

Now it all made sense!  I knew that Meese had been pissed off at me for the last three weeks  since I forbade him to go outside because of his allergy to fleas.  His constant mewling was driving us crazy!  Understanding how his resentment had finally devolved into the pursuit of revenge and escape, it was clear that he had jumped onto the counter top and pushed the bills to the floor.  Maybe his devilish plan was to use the money to get a bus ticket to Immokalee or points north, and he had undoubtedly talked Cody into going with him, but whatever the plan, the fact that the two of them had turned against me was greatly discouraging.

I can only surmise that when the bills hit the floor, Cody, who is actually a goat in disguise, and has no short term memory, lost all pretense of cooperation with Meese and just couldn't resist the salty taste of a $16 treat that had just come out of the ocean (who knew he liked seafood!).  He gobbled them down--

Ergo, what I was seeing in front of me was the unfortunate but inevitable result of his greedy penchant to eat anything.  As he trotted beside me back to the house, he didn't seem the least bit concerned that he had just been revealed as 'just another son who steals from his Dad's wallet'.

After donning bright yellow rubber gloves, I faced the task of extracting the money from the organic clutches of Cody's indescretion.  Imagine my dismay when my first attempt to parse the pile resulted in only shreds of paper, not the whole bill!  Apparently the acid bitterness of the Cody's gastric channel had left the bills in tatters!

So, after I thought I had seen the last days of money disappearing mysteriously from my billfold during the years when the kids were younger, I guess I can still claim the dubious honor of being the world's smelliest human wallet! 

When I got back into the house I thought I could hear the Meese saying under his breath, "Foiled again!!"