You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Where’s the Burger?
“Baby where’s the other hamburger I grilled?,” I say into the phone.
I hear a pause, then a quiet sigh. There is silence on the other end of the line.
“The hamburger?,” she says weakly.
“Yeah,” I respond. “The hamburger.”
Again there is quiet. It’s a bit of an awkward pause. It’s not like I asked for the definition of Pythagorean’s theorem. I hear her moving in the kitchen, then the fridge opens.
“It’s not here,” she says.
I already know this. I was the Sherlock Holmes of the mysterious missing meat at 6:45 am. I pulled open the crisper and peeled back bowls with tin foil hoping to find the scrumptious burger. Alas it was nowhere to be found.
“I looked in the fridge this morning,” I say. “I couldn’t figure out where you put it.”
I hear her shuffling. She says nothing. I imagine her face contorting and her eyes squinting as she analyzes this carnivore conundrum.
“There were three burgers,” she says buying time. “Where did I put that other hamburger?”
As she works to find the answer, like the riddle of the Sphinx, I pause to stare at the sky. I watch a fluffy cloud float along the periphery of endless blue. It is round and puffs in the middle, like a cotton puff Big Mac.
What happened to that other burger, I wonder to myself. I know I cooked three. I turned it over and over and over on the grill. It was plump and juicy and I made sure it was perfectly grilled, knowing it would be delicious the next day in my lunch box.
I am standing on the back loading dock of work. The sun is warm and I am taking a break from the closed coffin air conditioned blah that is work. I stare at the cars dotting the striped asphalt. The sun is setting in the sky and the light is reflecting off the windshields lined up like so many star bursts piercing my view.
She still is quiet on the other end of the line. I ask again. “I grilled three hamburgers. We ate two hamburgers last night. I wanted to take the 3rd burger to work for lunch, but I couldn’t find it.”
On the other end of the line, her brain has engaged and the synaptic reflexes are stretching 12 hours into the past to remember. Hamburger? Hamburger? Hamburger? Where oh where is that other hamburger?
I hear her walking in the kitchen and a cabinet open. “Here it is!,” she says with a laugh. “I left it in the cupboard.”
“Left it in the cupboard?”
I laugh out loud. I don’t even have to ask why.
The answer: Black Jack – the 85 pound black lab who steals food off a counter like Billy the Kid once robbed stage coaches.
“Yeah, when we sat down at the dinner table, I put the 3rd burger in the cabinet so Black Jack wouldn’t get it,” she says pulling it out. “Well I guess he’s going to get it now,” she says with a chuckle.
This dog is a legendary thief. He is a K-9 cat-burglar. He is the Al Capone of carnivorous crimes without all the tax implications.
The big black lab with the cute face and mischievous grin is SEAL TEAM 6 when it comes to meat missions. And now he is digesting a perfectly grilled burger that should be in my stomach nourishing me.
Black Jack is a land shark who uses no teeth and a single slurp to consume food. He swallows it whole, without a gag reflex, pushing the 1/3 pound chunk of meat into his constantly churning stomach.
Hiding food from this predatory beast is a regular occurrence. You can’t just prepare food and forget about it in this house. Drop your guard, for even a moment and the dinner menu goes from Filet to Fruit Loops.
I’ve seen Black Jack jump up and swipe a hunk of meat, a wheel of cheese, a dish of nachos. His tongue is like that of a frog, moist and sticky and able to latch onto a hamburger bun with a single slurp.
He is a food Houdini, making dinner disappear in the time it takes to wave a magic wand over an empty can of dog food.
I’ve learned that unless you push the food on the counter away from the edge, it’s a culinary crap shoot. While he is only as tall as the latch on the dishwasher, he has a laser guided nose that directs him to the perfect spot. He is like the blind man in a dark room who is able to find the gold coin. He positions himself to the appropriate place below the countertop, sniffs the air furiously, then pushes off his powerful hind legs. In an instant his massive frame and mastodon sized skull lurk over the counter and inspects the bountiful buffet before him.
SLURP!
I’ve seen him suck a thick hunk of ham right off the platter into his gaping jaws. If he doesn’t immediately inhale the succulent meat, he surely scurries away to the dark corner of the kitchen to devour it like a python swallowing his prey.
And so this kitchen cat and mouse of food and counter space is part of the cooking experience each and every night. Because of Black Jack, buns are pushed to the far end of the counter, steak is left in the oven, where it is often forgotten.
And now, once again, because of the big headed eating machine, we have hidden a perfectly good hamburger so thoroughly that we forgot we even cooked it. And guess what? Now he gets it anyway.
Brilliant!
“He loved the burger,” she says laughing.
“That’s good,” I say knowing that once again a 12 year old Lab with decaying physical skills has out mentally out-maneuvered 2 adults on the battle field of deliciousness.
Life’s Crazy™