TODAY's QUOTE Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her? What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the applications for."~ Dave Barry Yesterday's Entries 2001: Standing in the Shadows TODAY's READ Arranged Marriage BOOKS READ THIS YEAR Venus Envy EXERCISE (does coughing count?) On TV Everybody Loves Raymond FOOD Breakfast: Cheerios Getting to know me....
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LASSIE 10 February 2004
I remember some years ago watching a special reminiscing about the years of the Lassie series. June Lockhart, who played Timmy’s mom for several years, was laughing about some of the outrageous scripts they had to deal with, giving Lassie supercanine powers. One particular episode that stands out was when the mom was walking in the woods and got her foot caught in a bear trap. Naturally Lassie comes along and she sends the dog back to the house to get a "C-clamp." "Remember, girl? It’s on the kitchen counter next to the sink and it looks like a C." So Lassie rushes off to home, raises her front paws to the kitchen counter but, being only a dog, can’t tell the difference between a C-clamp and a cheese cutter shaped like a C and so, after some decision making on her part, she chooses the cheese cutter and runs off to bring it to Mom. "No, No, girl," says Mom. "I mean the C clamp. It’s the thing that has the little screw on the bottom." Back goes Lassie to the house, this time getting the C-clamp, and the day is saved. Whew. There’s a dog for you. Animal Planet is always full of stories of animals who have exhibited great heroism – the dog who pulls the baby from a burning building, the pig who goes out and plays dead in the middle of the street so that passing cars will follow him back into the house where his mistress is lying on the floor, having had a heart attack, the cat who meows and meows and wakes the whole house up when a fire starts and saves everyone. Animals are really amazing. Last night I took my pain-wracked, germ-ridden body to the spare bedroom to bed, cuddled up under the quilt hoping that I’d wake up feeling better (I didn’t). I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. At 3:30, I was awakened by the sound of barking. It took awhile to realize what woke me up. Kimba is not a barking dog. She’s supposed to be a basenji and those dogs don’t bark at all, but she can and has barked. Stay out past suppertime and then drive into the carport and you’ll know there is no doubt about whether or not she has the ability to bark. But she’s not one who barks when other dogs pass by on the street or when thunder rolls, or for any frivolous reason. She’s also become deaf (sometimes I think selectively deaf) over the years, so she no longer barks a welcome bark when we drive in the carport. And at 90 in human years, she often doesn’t notice that we’ve come home even after we’ve come through the door, if she’s in a deep sleep, which is most of the time. Like Marn's cats, she needs her 22-1/2 hours of beauty sleep a day. So the sound of Kimba’s bark in the middle of the night, once I’d identified it, made me sit up and take notice. The drama queen in me assumed it could only be for two reasons. Either the house was on fire, or someone had broken into the house (having watched my share of Sopranos over the past month, this scenario evoked all sorts of images in my head). The logical thing, I suppose, would have been to get up and see what was wrong, but by the time I was fully awake, the barking had stopped and I figured that whoever had broken into the house had killed her. I got up and locked the bedroom door so he – whoever he was – couldn’t get in. I also felt the door to see if it was warm. No fire, I decided. I lay there listening to the sounds in the house. I imagined I heard a footstep. Or was it Kimba? I didn’t know. I wondered if an intruder had gotten into the other bedroom and killed Walt. I listened carefully for the sound of someone trying the door knob on the spare bedroom door. I tried to figure out how badly I'd injure myself if I had to climb out the window and fall to the concrete below. (Yes, there can be high drama in the middle of the night!) I never did go back to sleep and ended up, after 2 hours, assuming that the house was not going to burn down and if there had been intruder, he was long gone.
I don’t know what got her barking last night, but apparently there was no burglar and no fire and now that she’s awake, she seems fine this morning. I’ve just seen too many shows, I guess, where things like this happen and in my cold-influenced state, my imagination worked overtime. Just to be on the safe side, I think I’ll teach her how to fetch a c-clamp. You never know when you might step in a bear trap on the way to the supermarket. If you haven't seen the GE commercial with Lassie in it, you must go to this site and watch it. Funniest commercial I've seen in a long time. (Quicktime worked best for me) Our car is back!!!! |
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PHOTO OF THE DAY
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For more photos, please visit My Fotolog and My FoodLog |
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Weight Lost to date: 44.8 lbs
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Created 2/4/04
I loved Lassie when I was growing up. I loved collies period. I was a
big fan of all the Albert Peyson Terhune "Lad a Dog" (and other) books and was a
natural for watching the Lassie television series when it came out. Lassie was
SuperDog, all-wise, all-knowing, and always there to save the day.
When I got up, Kimba
was lying at the bottom of the stairs in what might have looked like a somewhat unnatural
pose. I couldn’t see her breathing. I touched her and she was cool, though not cold.
Had she died? I petted her for a long time and she finally looked up, groggily, as
if to say "Oh. Is it morning, already?"
