Fangs of Death

On the positive side, I’m grateful to have such a fearless protector, particularly when I’m alone, which is much of the time. This gratitude is tested, however, when the big dog’s needs interfere with my own, sleep for example.

I’m in Greensboro for the rest of the month, having taken an off-road motorcycle class last week, then buckling down to finish a king-size quilt for Christchurch. The quilt is quite complex, and I’m working dawn to dark every day. Sleep is vital to the endeavor.

Last night, however, Rastro insisted on waking me up just after I’d fallen into deep slumber, demanding that I let him out RIGHT NOW. Grumble grumble grumble ok. I hate not having a dog door in this house.

When he refused to come back in directly, I decided he could spend the night in the yard. Two hours later (again, after I was deeply asleep), his extremely loud and frenzied barking dragged me out of bed and outside. I expected to find him at the door, but he was at the back fence, racing back and forth and barking his head off.

Rastro often spends time at the fence, consumed with longing for the cute poodle on the other side. But their normal activity consists of lying with their noses pressed to the gaps in the wood, moaning softly. This time, Fifi was also barking to raise the dead. I flailed around barefoot in the dark feeling for Rastro’s collar, praying with every breath that the massive poisonous snakes had all gone to bed for the night.

A scary hiss snapped my eyes to the top of the eight-foot stockade fence.

There, baring nasty teeth in an ugly face, was one very huge, very angry possum. And it wasn’t three feet from my face. Yikes!

This was so not the cute, soft New Zealand possum that mates with sheep and gives birth to sweaters. It was a butt-ugly, worm-infested Carolina mutant rat with a long naked tail and a bad attitude. I screamed and jumped back, tripping over a rose bush, landing almost as hard as I did flying off the dirt bike last Thursday.

But I’ve seen Rastro dispatch bigger, meaner rodents with his fangs of death, and didn’t want him tangling with this one.

Of course, as dense as our subdivision is, all the dogs in the neighborhood had joined the call for execution, and I think I was the only human outside in her nightgown in the middle of it all.

So I dragged myself out of the rose bush, found Rastro’s collar, and using my highly developed quilting muscles, wrestled 100 pounds of raging attack dog back inside, thus saving the life of the midnight marauder, unless it was stupid enough to jump off into some other yard.

I’m thinking a nap will be in order today. Rastro agrees.