A few may remember previous posts re Squeekers, our five year old
male from Path Valley who wakes me up every morning around four AM to
carry him around on my walk.  He rides in a ski hat, or maybe two if it
is a cold morning, (we had a few three hat mornings as well last winter).
 
    I hadn't given much thought before about how he knows to do this but he
climbs into our bed just about the same time every morning and licks my ears
and generally makes a nuisance of himself until I get both feet on the
floor.   Some times if he is cold he will join us at other times as well,
but generally settles down between the blanket and sheet so he won't get
rolled on.
 
Several days ago he started arriving around TWO a.m. each day and couldn't
understand why it wasn't time to get up yet.  By four he was sound asleep,
and then around seven I had to wake HIM up, but that wasn't as much fun for
him cause the sun was up, and the breakfast routine that we both share had
to be shortened.  What to do?
 
    Turns out that we have an old banjo wall clock that strikes the hour
and the mechanism that keeps track of how many times to strike was ahead of
the time shown by the hands.  Thus at two it was striking four times.  We
reset that, and this morning squeekers showed up at ten minutes to four,
right on time.
[Posted in FML issue 1226]