We are well and truly back in the season of bugs. The dogs are always with us anyway and carry their bug colonies.
Frankly, I’m surprised the beasts don’t carry the Covid-19 virus as well.
However, the virus appears to be more selective or doesn’t care to go in places dogs like to inhabit. Covid-19 likes nice clean sickbeds.
Our dogs like a nice clean verandah and regularly vacate theirs to allow for a sweep and mop up.
To fill in time they go to the bottom of our driveway to spy out what mischief is afoot. Or what mischief they can make if nothing is already going on.
The paper has been delivered many hours ago, the pick-up taxis have departed with their load of workers heading for an 8am start, little children holding parents’ hands negotiate the school gate traffic at the top of the street and gradually quietness and sticky heat descend.
Enter the stupidest dogs in the street, wondering where the other dogs are.
I know the others are sensibly sleeping in their chosen cool spots so they will be fit for the nocturnal canine choir that night. Whatever, the two stupids keep trawling the end of the street for signs of life.
Sneakily Dog Number Three, from a neighbour’s compound, enters the picture, apparently unable to find a cool spot or just bored. Sniffing and growling go on before they decide to play some sort of amicable dog chaise.
At the bottom of the driveway, we express hope that they won’t play in the long grass. That’s usually where the worst dog bugs, the ticks, hang out waiting for a hairy hide to pass by.
I become disturbed because I’m not seeing any dogs of any description. Then the senior dog raises his hairy head from behind a bush.
He’s the main reason the verandah has to undergo surgical scrubbing on a regular basis because he sheds hair in massive amounts. Most irritating.
“Where’s the other stupid dog,” I ask my companion, who has better eyesight than I do, even with glasses on. I’m supposed to be responsible for it because it was one of four tiny pups found in a cardboard box on the Pacific Harbour beach.
I agreed to let the one thrust into my arms stay, the others overnighted at the SPCA and went to kindly homes elsewhere the next day
. The puppy finder, my elder daughter, can be quite forceful when explaining to people how much they need a new puppy.
At that moment I spot it, tell my companion not to worry. Yeah, right. Turns out it is dog number three.
Apparently, I’m supposed to be able to tell it is this dog because it has a very short tail, hardly one at all.
I attempt to explain the dog is looking at me, I can only see its face, not its hindquarters. This is regarded as some sort of shortcoming on my part.
Anyway, it is not my dog, it doesn’t come running at the sound of crackling cellophane and cracking biscuits.
“Look, there she is,” says my companion, pointing to a driveway about five houses along. A pointy-nosed brown head that is not a mongoose pops up from the drain. “What’s she doing there?” I ask.
My companion explained that the dog runs under the driveways and through the culverts along the drain. She knows where she can enter the culverts and what place she can climb out again.
The temptation to tie something heavier than a dog license to her collar and toss it back into the drain was strong, but I’m not that kind of person.
However, I am homicidal when it comes to people-biting and clothes-chewing bugs, especially cockroaches.
The people-nibbling mosquitoes that gather around my toes and ankles at dusk and under my table and desk are smartly dispensed with, using the serious help of repellent.
Something that says ‘odourless’ means it can either sneak up on pests undetected, or it doesn’t continue trying to repel
up my nose for the next two hours or so.
Then we have the dreaded roaches. I never liked them, you understand.
But they are certain excess to requirements in a kitchen and in a bedroom where garments may be piling in the clothes basket. And unwanted in a household that has someone with an
absolute phobia about them.
While this person was still a wee child she could spot a roach at 50 paces and let out a yell that could be heard up at Flagstaff corner.
She didn’t go much on toads in the toilet, either. I accumulated weaponry of kitchen implements specially adapted to the capture and disposal of such unwanted creatures. When I say ‘disposal’ I do not necessarily mean kill, as in dead.
Sometimes it involved a trek to the back of the compound when I gave the offending toad or mouse a threatening lecture if they tried to return.
But a special exception is made for cockroaches.
Bugs beware! I am feeling particularly inclined to deal deathly justice since I discovered a hole chewed in one of my coolest shirts this week.
- The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily of this newspaper.
