[lit-ideas] Re: Milo's Excellent Adventure

  • From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:48:23 -0600

A terrier chasing a coyote?  That's home schooling for you/

Mike Geary
in coyote free Memphis


On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 10:08 PM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  We have a little Jack Russell rescue, who’s somewhere around two and
> weighs twenty pounds. As a Terrier must, he barks daily at the squirrels
> that run along the top of the back fence and swing impudently from branches,
> flicking their tales at him. For the past few days though he’s been running
> to the front door and barking his deepest Big Dog bark; he keeps it up even
> after I’ve turned on the outdoor light and seen nothing. There are a number
> of cats who roam the neighborhood.  ‘Cats,’I said to myself.
>
>
>
> Last night however he was in a frenzy, even though again I could see
> nothing for him to be barking at. Finally, he quieted down and jumped up and
> lay beside me as I was trying to watch a college basketball game on TV, and
> read the New Yorker. The forecast had been for snow and below-freezing
> temperatures—unusual for Portland, in November, and after a while I went to
> the front door to sniff the air. I opened the door a crack—no more than
> three inches—and like a shot, a shot propelled by a rocket on steroids, Milo
> the Terrier was out the door and disappearing down the street, which was
> lightly covered with frozen snow. I put on some shoes and an old hat and ran
> upstairs to wake Linda. We backed the car out and drove slowly around the
> neighborhood, trying to keep to the route we take when we’re walking him.
>
>
>
> Every now and then we would see flashes of white fur zooming the opposite
> way from us. A few times he came near the car but when we reached out to
> him, off he went again. Eventually, we gave up, came back inside and hoped
> that Milo would find his way home by himself. In a bit, Linda went out again
> on foot and came back to report that Milo was chasing a very *big* coyote
> around the neighborhood, and that sometimes the coyote seemed to be chasing
> *him*. She'd last seen them as they disappeared into the underbrush. I
> thought of him lying bleeding from his wounds as he froze to death on this
> coldest night of the year.
>
>
>
> A happy ending: Milo kept returning to the front door but shying away when
> we tried to grab his collar or his tail or even his fur. He did this three
> or four times; but in the end, wet, muddy, half-frozen, he came in through
> the door, which we’d left propped open, on his own. He was glad to be rubbed
> down with dry towels and to be fussed over but his heart was still beating
> as if he were still in flight or in hot pursuit. Or both.
>
>
> Robert Paul
> Lake Oswego OR
>
>
>
>
>

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