Well, let me tell you about my dog, Oscar. Now, Oscar is a character—a real sneaky fella. You can’t hear him coming, I swear he’s got ninja training or something. He’s like a furry ghost, especially when it comes to snatching things he shouldn’t.
One fine evening, I had this blind date coming over. A real catch, mind you. But there’s a catch to the catch: she’s blind as a bat. Now, Oscar, being the opportunistic canine he is, decided this was the perfect time for a little adventure.
It all started innocently enough. The Christmas turkey was long gone, but the stuffing—oh, that golden stuffing—was still around. Oscar, with his stealth mode engaged, tiptoed his way to the kitchen. If he could have whistled, he would’ve, but that’s not in a dog’s repertoire.
He managed to swipe the entire Tupperware of stuffing without making a peep. I swear, I turned my back for a second, and it was gone. Poof! Vanished into thin air.
Now, here’s the kicker: Oscar, in his quest for gastronomic delight, devoured the whole thing. Every last morsel. Little did I know that he was turning into a walking gas chamber.
Back to the blind date—let’s call her Rita. So, Rita comes over, and we’re having a jolly good time. I’m making my best impression, cracking jokes, and trying not to spill anything on myself. Meanwhile, Oscar is lying low, plotting his next move.
The moment of truth arrives when Rita says she’s getting a bit warm. Innocently, I blame it on the heating, but the real heat was coming from Oscar’s back end. Silent but deadly—you know the drill.
The smell hits us like a freight train, and I’m trying to keep a straight face. Rita, being blind and all, looks at me like I’ve sprouted a second head. I, being the gentleman I am, took the fall for the ungodly stench.
I explain with a straight face that it’s just my quirky sense of humor. But Rita isn’t buying it. She insists that I must be joking and that there’s no way a person could produce such an odor. I’m desperately trying to convince her it’s the dog, but she’s having none of it.
Oscar, in the corner, looks at me with those guilty eyes. But Rita, being blind to his shenanigans, thinks I’m making up stories. In the end, I apologize, open a window, and try to salvage what’s left of the evening.
Lesson learned: never underestimate the stealth capabilities of a dog with a taste for Christmas stuffing. And if you ever find yourself in a similar predicament, well, good luck explaining it to someone who can’t see the evidence right under their nose—or, in this case, their nostrils.
Some people send newsletters every Christmas to keep friends and family informed as to what happened during the year. Well, this is my version, but it is only about one incident last summer.
We have the standard 6-foot fence in the backyard, and I heard about burglaries increasing dramatically in the entire neighborhood.
To make sure this never happened to me, I got an electric fence and ran a single wire along the top of the fence. Actually, I got the biggest cattle charger that Tractor Supply had, made for 26 miles of fence. I then used an 8-foot-long ground rod and drove it 7.5 feet into the ground. The ground rod is the key; the more you have in the ground, the better the fence works.
One day, I was cutting the grass in my backyard with my 6-hp mower. The hot wire is broken and laying out in the yard. I knew for a fact that I had unplugged the charger. I pushed the mower around the wire and reached down to grab it and throw it out of the way. It seems as though I hadn’t remembered to unplug it after all.
Now, I’m standing there, I’ve got the running lawnmower in my right hand and the 1.7 gigavolt fence wire in the other hand. Keep in mind, the charger is about the size of a marine battery and has a picture of an upside-down cow on fire on the cover. Time stood still. The first thing I notice is my balls trying to climb up the front side of my body. My ears curled downward, and I could feel the lawnmower ignition firing in the backside of my brain. Every time that Briggs & Stratton rolled over, I could feel the spark in my head. I was literally at one with the engine. It seems as though the fence charger and the POS lawnmower were fighting over who would control my electrical impulses.
Science says you cannot crap and pee at the same time. I beg to differ. Not only did I do both at once, but my bowels emptied 3 different times in less than half a second. It was a Matrix kind of bowel movement, where time is creeping along, and you’re all leaned back, and BAM BAM BAM you just crap your pants 3 times. It seemed like there were minutes in between, but in reality they were so close together it was like exhaust pulses from a big block Ford turning 8 grand.
At this point, I’m about 30 minutes (maybe 2 seconds) into holding onto the fence wire. My hand is wrapped around the wire, palm down, so I can’t let go. I grew up near a farm, so I know all about electric fences, but my father always had those POS chargers made by International or whoever that were like 9 volts and just kind of tickled. This I could not let go of. The 8-foot-long ground rod is now accepting signals from me through the permanently damp Ark-La-Tex river bottom soil. At this point, I’m thinking I’m going to have to just man up and take it, until the lawnmower runs out of gas.
“Damn!” I think, as I remember, I just filled the tank! Now the lawnmower is starting to run rough. It has settled into a loping run pattern, as if it had some kind of big lawnmower race cam in it. Covered in poop and pee and with my balls on my chest, I thought, “Oh God, please die. Pleeeeze die”. But nooooo, it settles into the rough lumpy cam idle nicely and remains there, like a big bore roller cam EFI motor waiting for the go command from its owner’s right foot.
So here I am in the middle of July, 98 degrees, 80% humidity, standing in my own backyard, begging God to kill me. God did not take me that day; he left me there, covered in my own fluids, to writhe in the misery my own stupidity had created.
I honestly don’t know how I got loose from the wire. I woke up laying on the ground a while later. The lawnmower was beside me, out of gas. It was later in the day, and I was sunburned. There were two large dead grass spots where I had been standing, and then another long, skinny dead spot where the wire had laid while I was on the ground still holding on to it. I assume I finally had a seizure and, in the resulting thrashing, somehow let go of the wire. Upon waking from my electrically induced sleep, I realized a few things:
Three of my teeth seem to have melted.
I now have cramps in the bottoms of my feet and my right butt cheek (not the left, just the right).
Poop and pee, when all mixed together, do not smell as bad as you might think.
My left eye will not open.
My right eye will not close.
The lawnmower runs like a sum ma bitch now. Seriously! I think our little session cleared out some carbon fouling or something, because it was better than new after that.
My balls are still smaller than average, yet they are almost a foot long.
I can turn on the TV in the family room by farting while thinking of the number 4 (I still don’t understand this). That day changed my life. I now have a newfound respect for things. I appreciate the little things more, and now I always triple check to make sure the fence is unplugged before I mow the lawn.
The good news is that if a burglar does try to come over the fence, I can clearly visualize what my security system will do to him. And THAT gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling all over, which also reminds me to triple check before I mow.
I originally wrote this in 2005. I thought it was a good time to republish it.
