Killing Mr. Smiley

At some point in the game, Chet had to get hold of Mr. Smiley.

Although his first instinct is to rip a much-desired toy to shreds, Chet knows he mustn't do that. So he mouths it and chews very carefully, waiting for the shoe to drop and for somebody to yell at him. And he's not above a little taunting of his own:


All right, Phoebe. It's business time.


Chet Baker, if you chew that all up, we won't be able to play with Mr. Smiley any more. Give it to me.


I am sorry, Miss Phoebe. I cannot give it to you. Because it is mine now.


I'm sorry, Chet Baker, but you MUST give it to me.


And I am going to hide it in the closet so you can't get it.

Well, that is a rotten dirty trick. Why aren't you helping me open the door?

Roo roo roo rooooo!


Perhaps I can get it myself.


And here we have the definitive photo of the Boston terrier's Catpaw maneuver, rarely employed, but quite effective. Chet Baker is right handed, like his Mether.


He succeeds in opening the door, and grabbing Mr. Smiley. The Games Go On.

The Fabulous Flying Baker Brother

Brief technical note: I mentioned that I'm migrating to another server. My blog URL will stay the same, and with my fabulous Web Witch working on it, the transition should be seamless. But sometimes things go awry. Should you have any trouble accessing my blog in the next few days (let's say that you don't get a fresh post Sunday night; you just keep getting this same post into Monday), try clearing your browser cache, then delete and recreate the bookmark for my blog. I don't think there will be a problem, but it pays to be prepared. Back to The Bacon:

On a particularly rough day at school,  Phoebe came home and kind of crumpled up.

Nurse Baker has radar for crumpled people. I peeked in the living room to find him curled up with her, a protective paw on her leg.
The camera shutter (why can't they be silent?) brought Phoebe around, and Baker fixed me with a glare. Some things should be sacred, Mether. Nurse Baker is working here. Would you please?

Phoebe and Chet play like sister and brother. Even though he is a dog, the tenor of their games are very similar to those she plays with her human brother Liam. The root of most of them is: I have this, and you don't. Neener neener!

One such thing that Chet Baker set his sights upon was Mr. Smiley, a dopey inflatable, the kind of thing that can transform a kid's room from serene to junky just by its presence. Chet wanted it, bad. I would have been fine with his reducing it to smithereens, but Phoebe was sort of loosely attached to Mr. Smiley. If only to use it to tease Chet Baker.

Let the games begin!I want that thing, Miss Phoebe. I want it bad. I want to pop it with my teeth.



Well, then jump for it, Chet.


You will note that, in a concession to Chet's weak anterior cruciate ligament on his left hind leg, a leftover from having jumped off a hay roll as a puppy, we have padded the floor with a squishy bed. The dog is irrepressible. Boston terriers must boing, and boing again.


Roo roo rooo rooooo! This may be the definitive Boston terrier roo shot. He even makes his lips into an O.


This is one of those shots that you get, that when it pops up on the playback screen, makes you let out a startled squawk. Let's have a closeup.


Yes, that is his real, unShopped eye, and yes, he looks just like Steamboat Willie, the first incarnation of Mickey Mouse. Selective breeding is an amazing thing. We make dogs that look like blinkin' cartoon characters.



Obviously, Chet's been reading the same manual as Willie.

Because there are just too many fabboo Chet Baker shots to share here, I'm going to split it up. You can only take too much cuteness before there's overload, insulin shock and all that. Down, Chetfans, down. More Fabulous Flying Baker Brother on Sunday evening. That is, if the blog gremlins behave.

Interlude

Charlie is busy ruining the cord to my hoodie. Krounchkrounchkrounchkrounch.

It feels kind of funny to be done with Guyana. Since December, it's anchored my blog, with occasional diversions for orchids, snow, power outages, taxes, April Fool's jokes, and good old Chet Baker. I never thought I'd go that long, writing and posting about one place--sixty-four posts, at last count. But oh, what a place, and what an experience! I'm dizzy with the thought of plunging into Honduras now, of mining memory's feeble banks for another long tropical adventure, even as spring migrants flood into Ohio. There's a dissonance there, because spring in the Appalachian foothills is every bit as luscious as Honduras in March. What's a blogger to do?

Lucky, that's what I am, just flat out lucky to have had the chance to go to South and Central America, and to have the means and this venue to write about it, to show it all to you. I wouldn't have been asked to go unless I had Bird Watcher's Digest graciously holding space for an article, and you, my readers, enough of you to make an audience.

I'm feeling particularly thankful these days. Thankful for my place in life, for a warm house, for my husband, who still likes hanging out with me, who makes me laugh like nobody else, and who has worked his heart out around the place this spring. Here's Liam, his vanilla Mini-Me.

Liam on the flatfile.

Thankful for my healthy smart children, who come to me with all the little mishaps and heartbreaks of the playground and high school halls, thankful that I can usually still fix things for them with a good dose of common sense.

Phoebe with her pets. Y'all have a serious, major, prolonged Chet Baker fix coming up.

I'm thankful for the peas coming up in my garden, for the little twin-leaved seedlings of lettuce and mustard and arugula. Thankful for the ovenbird who arrived and started singing yesterday afternoon. Thankful for the rain that's watering everything, and the south wind that's whipping all the little leaves out into full form.

I'm thankful for my friends, real and virtual, for the warm voice on the phone, the dinners and concerts together, or the spot-on message in my inbox. I'm amazed that the pack of them can make me feel so loved, even when I'm alone mostly all day.

And I'm thankful for the parrot on my shoulder, who smells of flowers and socks, and the warm, smooth little dog who stands on my lap as I write. His front paws on the desk, he straddles the keyboard, watches out the window for that darn squirtle who's been spooking around the yard. He knows not to step on the keys, and so does Charlie.

Photos by Chimpcam

That's something, to have friends like that.