Dear Ferret Folks-
 
This does not concern ferrets, but it does concern my dog, the noble
Allis Chompers whom some of you know.  She has borne nine years of
ferretude in her home with fairly little complaint given the extent to
which her patience has been tested by weasels over the years.  Ferrets
in her dog bed.  Ferrets who crapped in *her* personal velvety green
armchair, causing her to abandon it for weeks..  Ferrets in her food,
hanging over the rim of her bowl and grazing on her chow.  Attacks upon
her tail from behind, from beneath furniture.  Ping even used her nose
for a chew toy, on one memorable occasion.  She very carefully did not
eat him, for which I am grateful to her.  She was certainly provoked.
 
Yes, she's been through it.  She is an old dog now, at least ten, and
she's seen a lot of things.  We like to say that our new house is her
retirement home.  It is much more deeply snuggled into the woods than
our apartment was.  (We just moved in the last few weeks.)  She has a
sunny yard to lie in, and delights in rolling on her back ecstatically
in fresh-cut grass.  On hot days, she looks for the fringe of shade given
by the swamp maples and white birches.  Her eyes...slowly....shut, and
she is back in her youth, chasing rabbits in her dreams, paws twitching
in the grass.
 
Yes, she probably thought she'd seen it all, all the mad things that
hoomins do.  Well, the old dog learned something new yesterday, and it
was a scream!
 
There were two hemlocks growing in our new front yard.  I have nothing
against hemlocks, but these two should never have been allowed to grow as
close to the house as these.  One good New England ice storm, and boughs
would have rained down on the roof.  Hemlocks have a bad habit of tipping
over in a high wind, too, and both of these could have come down on the
rafters if that had happened.  Unfortunately, they had to go.
 
My husband fired up the 1969 John Deere model 1020 tractor and wrapped
chains around the first tree.  A good pull, and the first one fell over
with a thump and a flurry of bark chips.  Allis watched all of this from
a distance, and clearly wanted to be included in the fun.  There were
neighbours standing around watching, There was diesel smoke, shouting,
high excitement all around.  A chain saw fired up, and the first tree
was sliced into manageable lengths, the boughs stripped off.  I don't
like to kill a healthy tree, but roofs are *expensive.*
 
The second tree was prepared.  Again, a stout chain was wrapped around
the trunk, and the tractor started revving up.  Allis was standing a bit
closer to the second tree than she had to the first, maybe fifteen feet
away, but on the safe side of the tree.  (She's not stoopid, she saw the
first one come down, after all, and I wouldn't let her stand on the bad
side of the tree that was about to be lying on the ground.).  A belch of
smoke from the tractor, and the second tree began to tip.
 
Well, this tree had one very long, very strong root running horizontally
just a few inches below ground level.  As the tree tipped more and more,
the carpet of grass and weeds and moss at the base of the tree lifted up
above the root.  The ground actually swelled like a liquid wave above
this long root, and Allis started rising *with* the wave.  She was
probably two or three feet up and rising rapidly as the ground beneath
her lifted.  Her ears stood up and away from her head like exclamation
points, and her eyes popped wide open.  She stood frozen in shock for an
instant, then *leapt* for the safety and the sanity of the house, which
had certainly never moved in her experience, and offered, she hoped,
some protection from this doggie bad acid trip of an event.
 
She didn't make a peep, she just flew with the vigor of her former
youthful athleticism.  She landed on ground that wasn't moving at about
the same time as the second tree lay down, and was still.  She stood
there, looking at it, her tail hanging limply.  Then she turned her head
and gave me a long, soulful and searching look, her eyebrows raised as
if to say "What the HELL was that all about?  The ground has never moved
*before.* Never.  I would remember." Then she did what she does in
moments of extreme dismay.  She padded over, all forty five pounds of
her, (she is a cross between a lab and a border collie, which either
makes her a Blab or A Borderline Collie) and sat down on one of my feet.
She rested her gaze on the raised mound of earth that she had been
standing on, and just stared at it.  Then she huffed a few times, and
lay down, still staring, waiting to see if the grassy carpet would move
anymore.
 
It didn't.  But we are horrible people, horrible.  We laughed and laughed
and laughed at her.  I think perhaps her entire understanding of the
universe has changed.  Next time we see her lying as flat as a pancake on
her side in a sunbeam with eyes closed and paws twitching, will she be
chasing that rabbit through the thick stands of mountain laurel and high
bush blueberry, or will she perhaps be...leaping to sanity in a world
gone suddenly mad?
 
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 5335]