Good day, fellow Raphaelians!
Things have been pretty slow here on the not-Family homestead. Yeah, between the pandemic and the hot, sultry Iowa summer, not much has been happening. For weeks now, the highs have been in the mid-nineties and the humidity has been in the mid-eighties. Ugh. Nary a visitor in sight, if you don’t count the Amazon driver.
The closest thing we’ve had to something interesting was a bit of life imitating art (or not) yesterday. Yesterday the pond supply store finally had grass carp in stock after being out of them for a couple of weeks. So, it was off to the pond store. However, due to the heat and humidity, we couldn’t use an old Ford pickup without an air conditioner. There was not a dog riding shotgun, all excited for an excursion.
In fact, due to social distancing, the carpies had to be pre-paid with a credit card over the phone. I drove into the parking lot and the owner of the store placed the plastic bag of carp and water on the floorboards of the passenger seat of the air-conditioned car. I was in and out without ever leaving my car.
No woozles went for a swim. No carp was deposited on my seat. It was all quite boring compared to Ralph’s adventures. Sigh.
The carpies have been safely introduce to the pond.
So, as you might imagine, the woozles are bored, bored, bored. Except for early morning pond time and walks in the woods, when it is a bit cooler, they spend most of their time indoors, in the air conditioning, being bored.
Not-Elizabeth, being the sucker that she is, is right now, as I write, giving the woozles a ride. They’re not going anywhere particular, just riding around the county, looking at something other than the inside of the house.
As always, all the credit for the story goes to not-Elizabeth. She retains the copy right.
Before we go on, the rules:
Pooties are cats; Woozles are dogs. Goggies are dogs, too, and moggies are cats. Birds...are birds! Peeps are people. PWB Peeps are Pooties, Woozle, Birds People. No trolling the diary.
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- There are some pics we never post: snakes, spiders, creepy crawlies, any and all photos that depict or encourage human cruelty toward animals. These are considered “out of bounds” and will not be tolerated.
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- It should not need to be said, but ANY/ALL photos that imply or encourage human violence against an animal will be considered verboten! Whether it is “comedic” or not.
And with the formalities out of the way, on to today’s Ralph!
A Raw Deal
For the fifth week in a row Arthur could be found in the checkout lane at the discount grocery store, his cart loaded with three large packages of chicken thighs, two large packages of drumsticks, and a slightly smaller package of wings. He cringed when he saw that the same cashier who had waited on him so often in the past was ringing up this purchase as well. “Boy, you sure do like chicken!” the guy enthused. “It must be a party at your house every week. How do you fix it, BBQ?”
“Um, yes, yes, I do quite a bit of BBQ,” Arthur mumbled, his head buried in the cart. He was indeed fond of BBQ, but that wasn't the reason behind these purchases of raw meat. He was buying it for the dogs and there was just something a little embarrassing about admitting that.
Ralph had watched absolutely speechless each time he sat in on a feeding session. Arthur had never fed him anything remotely like this. Instead, kibble with goodies on top had been his standard fare. This raw diet looked absolutely delicious. If it was possible to be miffed when in Heaven, then he was miffed.
It had all started when Arthur went to pick up Annie and Buster from the rescue site. He'd asked what food they were eating, he was more than willing to get the brand of dog food they were used to. He recognized that their food and their names would be the only things familiar to them at first. When the woman had explained that they were fed a raw diet he'd had to ask for details. Was she referring to something like ground hamburger? Or that high-priced stuff he'd seen refrigerated at the end of the pet aisle in the grocery store?
As it turned out, raw meant just that. It meant that meat, bone and fat were tossed into the bowl each night for their dining pleasure. It had taken some convincing to get Arthur to come around to this idea. Didn't bones present a danger, and wasn’t there the chance that they'd splinter and damage canine innards? Wasn't e. coli and other bacteria present that would make the dogs sick? Really, he certainly knew that you had to be careful when preparing chicken.
He'd been assured that raw bones presented no problem, and that only cooked bones splintered. Bacteria could be present but unlike the inferior human system, a dog's gut had enzymes that took care of that. And the final rebuttal was that it's what dogs have been doing for millennia, so why change something that works?
“Actually,” the rescue woman had confided, “a rabbit caught in the back yard is the perfect meal. Don't take it away from them.” Arthur's stomach had done a little bunny flop with that comment. Ralph, on the other hand, was warming to this idea. He'd caught a rabbit in his youth and still remembered that mobile tactile taste sensation. Maybe he should play the galloping gourmet and recommend it.
Arthur had resolved to at least give the diet a try, thus the weekly visits to the discount grocery for chicken where he could get it for $0.99 a pound. The one thing that kept him going back was the reaction of Buster and Annie. They devoured it. It amazed him to place a bowl with almost two pounds of raw meat and bone in front of each dog and watch it disappear in less than five minutes of crunching and drooling. There certainly was something primal about that!
But while there may have been some advantages to the raw diet, the weekly trip to the grocery store was not one of them.
Also, it was not conducive to marital bliss. Elizabeth was appalled at the idea and viewed each package of raw meat as a potential health threat when handled by Arthur. She took to following him around as he dished out each dinner, a disinfectant wipe in hand, tracing over where he'd just been. Arthur became concerned that the wipe, under Elizabeth's direction, could at some point get ahead of his dishing up and be more of a health hazard to the dogs than any bacteria he might be feeding them. So he switched to keeping their food in his shop refrigerator and Elizabeth was somewhat appeased.
But Arthur was pretty sure this calm would not last long because he'd placed an order for one hundred pounds of chicken backs, turkey necks, and pork necks from the butcher so he could discontinue the weekly shopping trip. It would be coming in a few days and he planned to bag the meat up into two-meal portions. This would work so much better. The only possible snag would be if Elizabeth balked at sharing some freezer space with these items. Arthur would sort that out when the time came.
True to form, Ralph found Arthur a few days later crouched over three boxes of animal parts. But it was not the picnic Arthur had envisioned. The pork necks and turkey necks were frozen rock solid and vowing never to be separated. The chicken backs were in a transitory state. Those in the middle of the box were frozen but those around the edges were thawing and dripping blood and bodily fluids all over his shop floor. He tried to pull individual chicken backs out of the heap, tearing some in pieces as they refused to give up the hold they had on the inner mass. Frustration led him to grab a screwdriver out of his toolbox and even though he attacked at random, the chicken backs were winning.
Arthur had hoped to get everything packaged and in the freezer before Elizabeth returned from visiting a friend. She'd gone over to Amanda's to get an earful of her latest project, which was something about soup if Arthur remembered correctly. But as he tried to separate chicken backs and bag them, his fingers remained frozen, and his temper became more hot under the collar.
“Why is this so hard?” Arthur fumed. “It's the middle of July! Shouldn't frozen objects just melt in no time at all?”
In despair, Arthur finally abandoned the parceling project, jammed the three boxes of frozen parts into heavy garbage bags and then into his shop refrigerator. After a quick mop-up of the floor, he headed into the house. He would call it a day and figure things out later. More than one corner of his mind was beginning to have doubts about the raw diet.
Ralph noticed Arthur's changing perception and was reminded of a Thomas Carlyle quote, “Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.” Arthur's conviction was still in the thawing stage, but Ralph could sense that his overall unhappiness with the current menu items might lead to a total scrapping of this newfangled diet in the near future.
A short time later, Elizabeth returned from her visit with Amanda. From the look on her face, it hadn't been a totally pleasant experience.
“I can't believe it!” Elizabeth ranted when she saw Arthur. “Amanda is so influenced by fads. Now she's getting into bone broth, saying it will cure everything she and Fred will ever have to deal with. She is so gullible!” With that Elizabeth dropped her coat on the chair and headed for the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile and lemon balm tea to calm herself.
“What's bone broth?” Arthur asked, trailing after her. “Isn't that what all broth is? Why does she say it's a cure?”
Elizabeth looked back in disgust as she answered. “It's just some stupid idea that making broth from really boiled down bones is better. She experimented with it a bit yesterday and now she wants to make her own in large quantities. Really, her whole house will reek of the stuff!”
Arthur's head began to reel. Bone broth. To make it you needed a lot of bones. Who might have a lot of bones? He did, of course!. In a flash, he knew just how he could be a good friend to Amanda as well as get out of the raw diet business without the burden of guilt. He had the bones, and she wanted the broth. Fair enough. He'd be relieved of all the mess and packaging, not to mention frigid fingers from bagging raw meat in bulk. Since it was still early afternoon, he needed to go see her now.
As it turned out, Amanda was more than willing to relieve Arthur of his three boxes of frozen body parts, although to be honest he had neglected to inform her that he had used a screwdriver as a culinary tool. In exchange, she gave him a case of cat food left over from when her cat Percy had been alive.
“It's all various kinds of seafood,” she told him. “Percy loved it. I don't know about dogs, though.”
“No, no, this is great, I'm sure Buster and Annie will love it, too,” Arthur assured her. He loaded the case into his car and immediately headed to the store for a bag of dry dog food. Ralph watched him go and realized that his thinking on the matter of a raw diet was changing and he was beginning to share Arthur's point of view. Maybe a regular kibble diet was for the best.
Buster eyed the meal that had been placed before him. There was a distinct absence of raw meat, just a bowl of unfamiliar kibble, and on top of it were clumps of something extremely smelly.
“What is this mush in the bowl?” he asked, as his wrinkled-up nose pushed it aside.
“It's pâté,” Annie informed him. “It's gourmet salmon pâté. I read it on the can when it was sitting on the counter. And it tastes heavenly!”
“You can be such a diva,” muttered Buster, a little more audibly than he'd planned.
“I am not a diva!” retorted Annie. “You make it sound like I'm an airhead!”
“No, I'm not saying that,” Buster replied. “I've made contact with your head many times. It is certainly more solid than air.”
Annie snorted.
“I'm only saying,” continued Buster, “that we both come from humble backgrounds so there's no need to put on airs. For goodness sake, you boarded with the donkeys for a while when you were at the animal rescue site!”
“You know,” Annie reminded him, “when He was young, baby Jesus slept in a stable as well.”
Buster remained silent, there was no need to encourage any further comparison between Annie and a Heavenly Being.
Republished with permission from Ralph Unleashed,Mischief and Mayhem with a Man’s Best Friend, available at Amazon.com.
Note From The Pootie Princess:
It is with a heavy heart that I have to tell you that samanthab’s partner passed away last night. As you can imagine, her grief is overwhelming right now.
Please keep her, and his other loved ones, in your hearts. When I have more news, I will certainly post it.
For now, we hold our samantha in our hearts and send her love and healing energy.
MarTigre