Monday, December 15, 2008

Caught Without My Camera

I made a quick stop on the way to work today to take a look at a dog up for adoption at the Bastrop County Animal Shelter. He looked very much like a rat terrier in the photo that ran in Saturday's paper and I've been thinking it's about time to go back to three dogs. I'm just not being adequately supervised these days.

It's a funny thing. With all the special dogs I've had in my life, they have always come straight to me and crawled in my lap and given me a look like "what took you so long to get here?". It was that way with Bebop, with Xana, with Mojo and with Coco. I just knew that little Tiger would leap into my arms and that would be that. I took along the pet carrier and planned to drop him off with my vet in Elgin to get a thorough check up before he came home.

It was not to be. Tiger wanted nothing to do with me. He circled around the room, dodging out of the way every time I tried to pet him. When I finally got close enough to touch him, when he cornered himself behind the garbage can, I offered my fingers for him to smell and he snapped at me and barked. I spent about 20 minutes talking my no-fail puppy chatter and he just stood beyond arm's length and barked.

I almost never fail to make friends with dogs and cats within 5 minutes. There was obviously something about me he just didn't like. So I regretfully said goodbye, petted the other two dogs that were running around and left without him. There's a little dog out there somewhere waiting for me. Tiger is waiting for somebody else.

The animal shelter is out in Lake Bastrop acres, an area that was once part of Camp Swift. It's mostly country roads and I wound my way slowly back to the highway. Just before I got back to Highway 95, I rounded a corner and saw a big clump of something black in the culvert.

It turned out to be the biggest convention of buzzards I have ever seen. I could not see the object of their concentration for all the shiny black backs that were turned to me. They sat in a big round circle, all facing inward, and totally unconcerned about the traffic passing behind them. There must have been at least two dozen of them. It was an awesome sight.

And my camera was sitting on my desk back at home.

Two lost opportunities in one morning.

LSW

3 comments:

MiniKat said...

I know you and your next friend will find each other. Life tends to fall into place where new critters are concerned. :-)

Anonymous said...

Hodge blood = critter magnet. We're all suckers for 'em.

LSW said...

Yeah, ya gotta wonder. We're all triple dipped in love for animals. Much rather hang out with my dogs than most of the people I know. LSW