As we were walking up the lane the other morning, Ben didn’t see the woodchuck ahead of us. The woodchuck saw us though and darted quickly away to her burrow.
Once we’d gotten up to where she’d been grazing, Ben discovered her scent and, nose to ground, followed it back to her home. He stuck his whole head in the opening, ready to climb right down after her. I had to pull him out, afraid he’d fall head first into the woodchuck’s hole.
A little farther along, two rabbits watched us, ready to scamper away when we got too close. Ben never saw them, but smelled where they have been and tail wagging followed their zig-zagging path. His eyes may not be as good as they once were and his hearing is definitely going, but his nose still works. And it delights him no end.
The other day, I was giving the house a quick clean, because I had a friend stopping by in the afternoon for tea. The day was lovely and I thought: “Why clean when we could just sit out on the patio?” Which was when I heard a tractor coming down the road and realized the neighbor had come to spread manure on our field. Oh, well - having tea inside would be the order of the day.
Ben settled in the kitchen on his bed, but as I moved into the living room to put something away, he lumbered up to follow me. One of the cats insisted upon walking between his legs, which for an old dog who is unsteady on his feet, makes walking precarious. So, he stopped and stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room trying to decide if he could get around the cat without falling down.
“I’ll be right back, Ben,” I said, “You don’t need to follow me.”
He eyed the clothes rack that was standing near the door suspiciously. Ben dislikes the clothes drying rack as much as he hates the cats. He is sure it will jump out and attack him if he gets too close. As the cats use it as a jungle gym and it has toppled over a time or two while they are swinging on the bars he is probably right to not trust the thing.
I put the clothes away and took the rack down and returned to the kitchen, saving Ben from having to walk into the living room. The kitchen counter was covered with paper trash ready to be burned in the wood stove, so I took that back into the living room and threw it into the wood stove. Ben started to get up again.
“No stay there,” I said, tossing a match into the stove with the paper and closing the door. I went back into the kitchen. The cats joined Ben on his bed and watched me move around the kitchen trying to bring some order to the mess. I loaded the dishwasher and started wiping down the counter, when I realized I smelled smoke. Back in the living room, with Ben and three cats following me, I discovered the papers in the stove were smoldering and smoke was billowing out of one of the connections in the chimney pipe.
I dug the smoldering papers out of the stove with the little ash shovel, dumped them in the ash bucket, and took them out of the house, a trail of smoke following me. After dousing the papers with water, I returned to the smoky house and opened the windows, exchanging the odor of smoke for manure.
By the time my friend arrived, our choices for tea drinking were outside with the smell of manure, or inside with the odor of smoke and manure. We opted for outside. But the company was sweet and Ben was very happy. There’s really nothing better for an old dog than a nap in the sunshine, with the sweet scent of manure in the air, and not a cat or clothes rack in sight.
Priscilla Berggren-Thomas is a writer who lives in Homer.
