Mud mania - Part 1

Saturday, 9:46 AM. Already 87 degrees. Humidity?!? Well, ONLY 81 %, but what a scorcher of a day this was going to become. The boys got up quickly for the call to breakfast at 7:30. At that time it was just 77 degrees. Saturday meant banana-berry pancakes, home-made sausage, Amish made maple syrup, OJ and milk. All of that meant a belly full til mid afternoon. Jarred started to stand up from the kitchen table and the bare part of his legs started to take the chair with him. And with the suction type sound it made, Stephen would have had milk coming out of his nose if it had actually been milk. This time it was orange juice. Nice. Real nice.

It was already a sticky hot day. Window fans, all across town, were blowing full speed. Some facing in, from the shady side of the house, to bring in the cooler air. Some facing out to remove the hot air through the highest window in the house, and a few more inside moving the air around. Several people had air conditioners in their living room windows, but even those looked and sounded like they were running too hot to work. "Too hot to do house work", was heard said by many a mother in town. "Too hot to do yard work" by a few fathers. And they weren't kidding. Too hot was an understatement. Jarred went to the freezer and grabbed a few ice-cubes to toss to me. If I had had hands, I would have wrapped them in a towel and tied it around my head. But instead, I chewed 'em up. That equaled about 90 seconds of cool relief to my tongue. (pant pant pant) On a trip, down in basement, to retrieve my most favorite chew toy, I realized a wonderful thing. And with a little coaxing, of several trips up and down the steps barking like there was no tomorrow, Mr. Meyers finally came down to see what the "Barking Menace was flapping his K-9 lips about". For the record, us dogs do not have lips. Anyway, he realized that it was nearly 20 degrees cooler in the basement, and then called for everyone to go down there.

The heat was breaking record highs by leaps and bounds, and was getting dangerously high for some of the locals. After Mrs. Meyers made a few phone calls to spread her husbands revelation (yeah right! HIS idea), news traveled fast and most people spent the day in their basements. And you would think that these so called more intelligent beings would have figured that out for themselves. They should listen to us dogs more often. We are pretty smart ya know.

Sunday came and went. Much like Saturday with the heat index high and humid. Everyone had a quick service at all of the churches to try and avoid the mid-day sun. A few kids were running through the lawn sprinklers, but many a family was planning to spend the day in the cool of the basement once again.

Monday, 8:35 am, 85 degrees and slowly dropping. The high for the day was to drop to 73. A cold front was moving in. With that could come storms and possibly severe weather. So of course the boys biked off to check the pond. Brainless wonders. I followed of course. Brainless dog. We went to see if their raft was still there, and to see just how low the water level was since they hadn't been there in more than 3 days. The ponds water lever was down by almost two feet after two weeks of scorching heat and no rain. Some clay at the far end was showing, and drying out rapidly. Even though it was quite humid, the heat still sucked the water out of just about everything thing it could. The day before Mrs. Kappral, the high school art teacher, was seen digging up some of that clay for a future project. She loved finding natural resources for potential works of art. The pond was mostly clean, and the clay was perfect for her 10th grade molding and sculpting class. She often said that "Natural is Better. God knew what he was doing." She'd say that natural clay, like natures other products, is far better than processed refined clay. Mrs. Kappral found a penny on the side walk that morning, and thought what a great way to be reminded of "In God We Trust".

The boys were listening to the weather report on the beat up radio Stephen had strapped to his handle bars. The antenna almost too out his eye once. Seemed the big storms were gonna go around Gruberville today. Still might be a little bit of rain though. But that would be good for the kids. They can go out and cool off in the rain. And fresh puddles in the grass are so much fun. Even for us dogs. After the weather report, the station resumed it's regular music line up, and Jarred sang every word of Johnny Be Good, replacing all the "Johnny's" with "Jarred". He almost wrecked his bike when he kicked out his leg trying to imitate Chuck Berry. His air guitar was a little dry too. The boys arrived at the pond and found everything in order. Stephen took his shoes off and waded in the mud and water to take a close look at the raft. Still there, still secure, and still... there is no way they were getting me on that thing. The boys did a decent job and all, and I can swim, but something just didn't feel right the first time I stepped on the USS Mini Enterprise. When they first launched the raft I had stepped one paw on it and then quickly backed off. It was something I couldn't explain but just knew. Jarred called me a chicken, and Stephen flapped his arms hard enough around while "buk buk bukking" at me that he stumbled right into the water. Call ME a chicken, you arm flapping flounder. Served him right.

As it was, the squishing sound that Stephen's feet made in the mud, made them both giggle ridiculously weird sounds. To be quite frank, it sounded like the mud had gas. Jarred chuckled a bit and then tried to imitate the sound with his hands in the mud. Flllllllllllllerp prrrp. On his next attempt his fingers ran into an old pie plate buried only a few inches. He pulled it out and immediately the light bulb came on. He filled the plate with some mud and chased Stephen around the pond, threatening to give him a mud pie facial. Jarred was flinging little bits mud from the plate at Stephen when suddenly, it was empty. Stephen found his opportunity, tackled Jarred, and stole the plate from him. It was now his turn. While rain began to sprinkle, and you could see lightning and hear thunder in the next county, the boys stuck sticks in the mud, made more flatulence sounds, and played in the clay until ..........

to be continued.

Henry the Dog.