Ohhhhhh gawd! This damn cold is hanging on like glue. Haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in four or five nights — wake up choking and gagging about once every two hours.
Along about 2:30 this morning I was already laying awake, gasping for air, when Cassie uttered the infamous, ominous “whuf?” sound. It is a dog utterance familiar to any companion of a German shepherd. It means, in rough translation, “huh? Whazzat?”
In the German shepherd, “whuf?” has a slightly more nuanced meaning: “If that’s what I think it is, I’m gonna rip its throat out.” Should the cause of the “whuf?” be followed by another suspicious sound, motion, or anything else, the next step can be to explode into action.
Corgis also may ask “whuf?” but they’re a lot less likely to go ballistic if they don’t like the answer. In Cassie’s case, if her suspicions are confirmed, she’ll try to bark the cause to death, but she will not attempt to rip it apart. At least, not in any proactive manner.
Dying, I growled back, “It’s just me. Go back to sleep.” Before I could pull the covers back over my miserable head, though, I spotted the cause of her inquiry: Bright lights flashing in the backyard.
A cop helicopter came roaring up and parked over my house. Holy sh!t, I thought he was gonna land on the roof! He couldn’t have been more than a hundred feet off the ground. He was glaring his spotlight all over the front, side, and back yards, the alley, everywhere.
Here, thought I, we go again. Got up to check that the doors were locked. Yea verily, yesterday being a 70-degree day, I’d left the front door open. Security screen with its special drill-proof uncrackable bullet-proof deadbolt was locked, though. So was the door to the garage.
Unpacked the Ruger from its hiding place. Damn thing hasn’t been cleaned since the Garage Invasion episode, nor have I practiced at the range with it. It being unlikely the current perp was in the house or was about to get into the house (at 2:30 one forgets one has left the German shepherd-sized dog door open…), I decided I was too sick to wrestle the dogs off the bed, herd them and me into the office, and barricade us behind the locked office door. Put the gun where I could reach it and went back to bed.
I really need to keep that pistol in the bedroom, except it would be too, too easy for the burglar to find it there. Wish I had some sort of throwaway pistol that wouldn’t represent a major loss if it was stolen.
Swarm of cops — including police SUVs — frolicked by the light of the copter. They danced around for 15 or 20 minutes.
Eventually, exit the helicopter. Squad wagons hung around for awhile, then left. I went back to bed.
Dog head pops up again: new light. Get up, peer out again: From the west side of the house, a spotlight is aimed into the front yard of my neighbor across the street. Possibly headlights — couldn’t see around my house’s west wall and wasn’t about to go out to investigate. But the light was not aimed down Pokey Lane: it definitely was beaming steadily at my neighbor’s front yard, which unlike my house doesn’t have a lot of shrubbery. This lasted till I gave up and went to back to bed.
It’s a wonderful life. Or something like that.