You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Hounds from hell.
It’s a Saturday morning and I’m sitting at the kitchen table.
Before me is a healthy man portion of scrambled eggs and toast.
I am about to enjoy this golden nucleus of life-sustaining embryonic breakfast when suddenly….
I am surrounded by 12 paws, 3 snouts, 6 beady eyes.
Yes, suddenly the hounds from hell have arrived.
It’s as if Satan has rung the prehistoric dinner bell, announcing the smorgasbord of confrontation is set to begin.
I scan the kitchen as 3 black labs with piercing brown eyes slowly take up positions before me
If this was a street fight, I’d be outmanned and out gunned by flea collar denizens of death.
These dogs are retrievers by nature.
But at this moment, the sweet smell of eggs filling the air, they are hungry carnivores fueled by primordial law.
I feel their intense stares as they approach slowly, tails wagging.
Oh sure, they’re friendly, but they are also cunning and aware of game that must be played.
It is survival of the fittest. It is man versus beast. It is eat or watch someone else eat.
It’s a chess match of culinary calculation.
“Get back hounds,” I say with a slight grumble in my voice.
I’ve got to remind them I’m the human in this equation and my will must triumph.
I watch their heads cock ever so slightly to the side.
Do they understand my words?
Do they just feel my vibration on a more rudimentary savage level?
The two female labs stop in their tracks.
They are beautiful creatures that really just want to please. They would eat my plate whole given the chance. But at the end of the day, the girl dogs are pets who just want to smile and lay at your feet and feel the love.
But the third hound is different.
The third hound is a force of nature, a rain cloud that floats over the horizon and then like a bellicose steam engine, devours you with force.
His name is Black Jack. He is a bull mongrel of a lab. He is thick like a linebacker. He is stout as a redwood tree on a California hillside.
Black Jack has a powerful snout, covered in white whiskers. Though old, he is wise.
This Milk Bone warrior uses his old man persona to his advantage. He has the look of an older dog who is too slow to snatch a piece of toast off the table.
But I’ve seen this four-footed felon work. He is shifty and mischievous and when it comes to food he is fast.
He is the Harry Houdini of food hyjinx and given a moment, he will make your food vanish right before you.
I’ve seen this hungry hound jump on the counter and inhale a tray of Bris Cheese. I don’t know what an entire wheel of French cheese does to old dog’s intestines, but I’m sure the gardener was none too happy weed eating through it.
Recently I opened the refrigerator door, just a crack, just enough to take a gander. The light had barely popped on, and suddenly, like a lightning bolt of black fur, the bull-dog demon was launched out of a pet cannon.
Whoosh. Boom. Snatch.
Fast like a line backer close lining a running back up the middle, Black Jack explodes to the light, to the opening. It’s as if this four-footed thief has a blue print of the fridge, a layout of the shelves, a diagram of where each food product has been placed.
SNAP, RIP, RUN.
And like that, I watch this bull in a china shop of a dog, snag a piece of steak on a plate. The steak is wrapped in a paper towel. It doesn’t matter. He knows the steak is there.
I am stunned by his electric speed and unbelievable finesse.
Chomp.
As part of his master dog thief plan, he is chewing the steak through the paper towel, before I can take the steak out of his powerful jaws.
Gulp.
Swallow.
Slurp.
And like that, a delicious filet that took an evening to prepare, is gone.
It’s a memory, as if it never happened.
What might have been a delicious sandwich at work, a tasty leftover smile of a meal, is now a paper towel wrapped excretory nightmare.
“How’s that Bounty Paper towel taste?” I muse watching this dog napping in action.
Yikes.
The dog licks his chops with a delicious smile.
He is a cat burglar of a dog, laying in wait and stealing edible morsels of unprotected nutrients.
And so it is with this knowledge that I sit at the little coffee table, my plate covered with eggs and bacon and toast.
I watch this bacon burglar with keen interest.
“Back up Black Jack,” I say with seriousness.
I watch the linebacker sized mutt wag his tail.
Whap. Whap. Whap.
His tail is pounding the cupboards rhythmically.
I push my fork into the warm scrambled eggs and collect a scoop.
I put it to my lips, constantly watching the hounds from hell.
Their big brown eyes are alive, alert, following the fork as if it contains the meaning of existence.
I pause the tasty morsel at the door step of my lips.
The dogs inch forward, trying to be as inconspicuous as 180 pounds of black labs can be.
The big Brontosaurus of a dog opens his jaw slightly revealing tongue, teeth, a desire to inhale the contents of my plate.
“Get back,” I say with authority as I swallow the tasty morsel on my fork.
In the time the eggs enter my mouth and slide down my throat, I am surrounded by 3 black dogs.
I feel the need to protect my property. It’s as if I’m in a prison cafeteria and the cons are trying to intimidate me, to take what’s mine.
So I hunch over forward. I push out my elbows to create a wall of impervious protection.
I slide my eyes from side to side looking for flaws in my dining defense.
With a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other, I circle my food source like a moat surrounding a castle.
No one will storm my breakfast wall, I think to myself.
The dogs realize the defensive nature of the game has changed.
The two girl dogs back off a foot or two, momentarily lowering the dog threat level from Lab-Con-3 to Lab-Con-1.
That’s because Black Jack, the missing link of K9’s is mulling over Darwinian principles of survival.
Me the dog versus him the human.
At stake?
The very essence of life; in this case a slice of bacon, simmering scrambled eggs, perfectly toasted bread.
Yum.
I turn my fork toward the quietly methodical food inhalation machine.
“Back off beast,” I say silently with an eye brow lifted and a Clint Eastwood squint of my steely blue eyes.
“I’ll shank your black ass,” I convey with my primordial stew of facial ticks and forced adrenaline rush.
Black Jack stares at me, his eyes darting to the plate and then back to my face.
He is in serious dog contemplation. I can hear his dog brain thinking, with an Eeyore like voice.
“Whadda I do? Whadda I do?”
His tail karate chops the cabinet behind him.
I extend my defense perimeter around the plate.
The warm steam of golden delicious eggs fills my nostrils.
I can fight, but I’d rather eat. I am tired of protecting my meal, but I must show resolve and let this primordial pooch know that I am the being with opposable thumbs in this kitchen.
I watch the big Brontosaurus of a Lab lick his chops, inching slowly forward, his dog nails tapping on the wood floor announcing to all that something is about to happen.
“NO,” I shout loudly.
He stops, his big brown eyes softening, his forceful, forward beligerousness snuffed out like a fire hose on a birthday candle.
He transforms from Hell hound, fueled by an eternity of hunger, back into a friendly house pet.
Black Jack joins the two lady labs eye balling me from across the kitchen.
I relax my moat defense, lowering my elbows, sitting up straight.
I dig my fork into the luscious eggs before me and push the fork into my mouth.
MMMMMM. Good.
As I swallow, 6 brown eyes watch my every move.
They are friendly and obedient, content for the moment to be man’s best fiend.
I take a bite of bacon.
So good, I think to myself.
I know these dogs would love some bacon.
But I cannot let them have any. If I let my guard down for a moment, for just a singular solitary second, you can be sure that Darwinian principles of survival will manifest and I will be on the wrong end of the food chain.
Life’s Crazy™