That’s the big problem right now. I have nothing to do but make up stories about things. Although some things just seem to create their own stories.
Like the swamp dog.
I was out for a walk with my dog over the weekend. It was a pretty good activity. No one around. No need to even think about social distancing.
So I’m walking along a road in the woods, my dog happily sniffing along the edge. I glanced off to the side where there is a fairly large swamp, and came to a stop. In the middle of the swamp there was a dog. He was not looking threatening in any way, largely because he seemed occupied with something.
He was a fair distance away. Far enough that I couldn’t really make out what it was he was involved with, but he was pulling at something that seemed buried or frozen into the swamp. I told my wife about this. She came back with, “maybe it fighting a beaver!” She is not a fan of beavers.
This goes back several years to when she was nurturing a small birch tree. Just as it got to a point it might actually be called a tree, a beaver came along and ate it. But a sucker birch grew from the roots to replace the lost tree. Then it got eaten by beavers. My wife is partial to birch trees. Beavers… not so much. She was very much hoping something was taking out a beaver.
But it wasn’t. Given the distance and the angle of the sun, I could really make out what the dog was fighting/ pulling/ playing with, but it seemed to be having fun. Not only that, it was a spring day and the dog was surrounded by mud. Pretty much heaven for many dogs.
There are some days I may have gone investigating the swamp dog, but I really wanted my dog to remain as mud free as possible. So the identity of swamp dog and what he was doing remain a mystery. I stood watching him for a while, and finally went along my way.
It was sort of entertaining. At least it beat watching three year old basketball games on television or reading Stephen King novels.
