August 23, 2002
We almost killed Peaches today.
I had told Kathy about a good friend of mine [from radio days] who went to her mother-in-law’s funeral recently and within hours, her husband’s sister got sick and died mysteriously (I think within 36 hours of the funeral), then when they came home, the husband took a fever and when they rushed him to the emergency room, the doctors couldn’t find anything unusual and sent him home. He almost died. All three had contracted the hantavirus from merely breathing in rodent feces (in fact, a tv newsprogram will cover this very case tomorrow after 60 Minutes on CBS). Well, this got Kathy really motivated to attack the pack rats in the garage [we live in the desert north of Cave Creek]. She put out a box of rat killer (little turquoise pellets), went to dump the trash, came back and saw Peaches (our border collie) gobbling them right up like they were, well, delicious rat poison. Kathy, panicked, threw her in the Escape, rushed our purple-nosed-hyena to the vet hospital in Cave Creek. I got the word in a budget meeting at the office.
I went down to visit our little snuff wagon at about four, and there she was in the “run,” looking sheepish and guilty. I took her for a walk up the hill in back of the vet clinic, came back, paid the bill ($227 Kathy's debit). The vet told me we were lucky. This happens all the time. And we were even luckier the poison wasn’t the new stuff, something called Def Com II, or something, because if it was she would have died in minutes, and even if we would have gotten the rats, the cat and dogs would probably have chewed on the carcasses and died anyway. Holy Guacamole! Talk about a no win! I thought about all of this as I walked Peaches back to the True West building. Of course all the women in the office fussed over her and she went around to all the work stations to get a big dose of sympathy and a tummy rub. Then she came into to my office, jumped up on the couch (she had never set paw in my office before this), put her chin on the back of her paw and sighed. She was asleep in about two seconds. Long dog day.


Lots of art to do. Need to burn.