Ramblings of a Happy Mind #3

 

Ramblings of a Happy Mind #3

By Nita Wilson

 

So the other night the dog/house mates decided to stay out longer than usual.  The weather was nice and I guess they didn’t like the stale dog odor inside the house.  I was sitting at my desk which overlooks the back porch and yard through a large floor to ceiling picture window.  This is where I write, this is where I lament the demise of the back yard and porch and this is where I keep an eye on the little creek that flows through old Hattiesburg.  It really is a creek, God made it to be a creek, but the city can’t stand the thought of anything natural interrupting the urban energy, so it’s now a fairly well kept drainage overflow to handle the water when it rains buckets.  I have to keep flood insurance as it flooded in the 1980’s before the city adopted it.  The only time it’s flooded since was during Katrina; the water crawled up the back yard, onto the porch, onto the steps of the front and back doors and as a small mole did the backstroke out of the carport, it went back down as quickly as it came up.  Made a mess on the porch, but I certainly had good fertilized plants for the next few years. And yet once again, I digress.   Anywhooo, the dogs were outside and I was finishing the day’s writing on “Hawthorne”, my latest novel.  I was tearing up as it was a rather sad bit in the story and I heard a lonesome wolf howl in the back.  Wohohohwo.  What the F.  I froze for a moment in total fear.  What wolf?  My dogs are outside and I haven’t heard them bark.  I slowly got up and went to the bedroom to get the handy dandy baseball bat I’ve kept by my bed ever since Halle Barry and I shared a dangerous stalker in Los Angeles on “Dorothy Dandridge”.  Now it’s one thing to have something in common with someone famous, but believe you me, you don’t want it to be a stalker.  Especially one who’s attacked one woman with a shard of glass and burned another woman’s house down.  I was fortunate enough to be working for HBO and they were very generous in hiring us both round the clock body guards until the guy was arrested.  Now, wanna talk handsome, whohoo?  And of course they’re in the next room while you’re snoring and any other bodily sounds you may make in your sleep.  Okay, now I’m really digressing.  Back to the wolf in the back yard.

So I slowly walk back into the living room and listen to the wolf again.  This time the wolf has a friend and the sound the friend makes is:  “Ou,ou,ou cough hack.”  Again the real wolf: “Ou, ou ou ouuuuuuuuu.”

Again the friend: “Ou, ououhack, bark hack.”  I slip over to the light switch and turn the back porch light on.  There’s Dash, sitting on her marble table, throwing her head back baying and howling at the ceiling. She completes the call of the wild and looks at Bronte whose sitting on the porch floor.  He throws his head back and hacks, “ous, hacks, ututut”.  It was clear I interrupted a lesson in howling at the moon.  This is a true story.  There’s been no lesson since, and Dash hasn’t done her beautiful howling again.  I say beautiful; it really was, clear, long, loud and just lonesome enough to make you sigh.  I don’t know why Bronte can’t howl; maybe he’s not allowing himself to open up to his inner wolf.  I do know that when I sat back down to the computer and left the light on, he yawned one of his huge alligator yawns; scratched his right ear with his right hind foot and got his foot caught in his mouth and couldn’t get it out.   Yes, friends I had to hold myself and run to the bathroom.  Thank God one is close and I didn’t spritz.  When I returned, he’d spat out his foot and they were both ready to come inside.  To think I pay fifty bucks a month for cable TV, silly me.  They’re even entertaining in their sleep when they dream they’re chasing whatever and the paws and swallowed barks are going a mile a minute. 

The sun has just gone down and the light in the backyard is rose and shadows.  The yard looks nice in this light, can’t see the dirt holes or messy overgrown shrubs.