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Digger

My mom once saved a hamster from being roadkill.  It was a fall evening, and my mother, my sister, and I were on our way to Montgomery Ward, which for those of you under the age of 50 was a discount department store.  There was a major intersection near our house, bordered on three corners by pear orchards, with a shopping center on the fourth.  As we waited at the stoplight, we saw a small critter in the streetlights, skittering back and forth in the middle of the intersection. 

“What is that?  Is that an animal?”

“It’s a hamster!  Mom, it’s a hamster! It’s going to get run over!”

So Mom pulled over, grabbed an empty black paper Montgomery Ward bag, and made her way to the middle of the intersection.  Somehow she managed to shoo the rodent into the open bag and avoid being roadkill herself.  We folded down the bag, and Mom drove us home.   To me and my sister, this was all perfectly logical.  Something needed saving, so we saved it.

“Daddy, we found a hamster!”

“Mom saved it! It’s in this bag!”

My poor father was beleaguered his entire life by the shear number of non-human living beings that found their way to our home.  He just hated it, and we ignored his hating it.

With a heavy sigh he took the bag, and looked in.

“Oh for criminy sakes, that’s a gopher!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, the teeth!”, he cried, making a gopher face with his front teeth hanging over his lower lip.  “You risked your life for a damn gopher!  Get rid of it!”

“Oh.  Rats.”  Lisa and I were disappointed.  We thought we had a new pet.

We drove to one of the pear orchards, and set our rescued friend free, before continuing our journey to Montgomery Ward.

Fast forward about fifty years. 

Montgomery Ward is history,, but I have a gopher in my backyard!  He’s really cute, and he does look a lot like a hamster, except of course for two huge long teeth.  

I don’t begrudge the gopher a little space.  Our dog Ziggy, however, thinks Digger, as I call him, is here to play.  At first, there were just one or two gopher holes.  But then Ziggy would stick his nose in a hole as far as it would go, and start frantically digging.  At one point he dug so deep his entire head was in a hole.  Digger doesn’t like the intrusion, so every time Ziggy digs, so does Digger.  Add to that Roy, who is much like Ziggy, maniacally running around shooting airsoft pellets down the holes, and you’ve got one very busy gopher.

There are two problems with this.  One, my lawn is a mess of holes.  And two, Ziggy keeps bringing a ton of mud into the house and it’s a heavy job keeping up with the transfer of topsoil indoors.

He actually caught Digger once, and we all frantically ran outside to rescue him from Ziggy’s jaws.  Well, Julia and I were on a rescue mission. Jackson and Roy were just bloodthirsty.

“Drop it!” I commanded in my mom voice.  Ziggy does not like my mom voice.

He did drop Digger, it was my mom voice, after all, and one of the kids corralled Ziggy and locked him in the house.  We were terrified Digger was mortally wounded.  His fur was wet, but we couldn’t tell if he had been punctured.

“You should have just let me shoot him!” Roy said hopefully, lifting his airsoft gun.

“Let me put him out of his misery,” Jackson said, grabbing a shovel.

“No, it wouldn’t be quick, you’d have to keep hacking at him!” I cried.  “Let him go home and die in peace.”

So we watched as Digger dug just a little, then stopped and stared at us, although I understand gophers have very poor vision.  Then he turned, and dug a little more, stopped, dug some more, until pretty soon he had a small depression, and he hunkered down in it.  Then he frantically dug at one end of his little depression until he connected with one of his tunnels, and disappeared.

Ziggy still sniffed the holes, which we tried to fill in, but Digger was gone.

Until…he was back.

Digger was only gone for a few days before he returned full force, and Ziggy was on the prowl.  As Ziggy dug into Digger’s fresh holes, Digger would just move along with new holes, thus spreading the destruction, and the dirt, like before.

Jerry bought a “Gopher Hawk”, a trap that drives a spike through the gopher like a stake through a vampire’s heart.  I forbade him from using it.  I didn’t want to kill Digger, I just wanted him to move along.  Instead, I bought two live traps, baited them, and set them outside fresh holes. Following the instructions, I was careful to use gloves so the traps didn’t smell like human.  Every couple of days I moved the traps to whatever holes looked freshest.  Jerry had also bought stakes that make noises only the gopher can hear, and moved them periodically. 

This went on for some time with no progress, and Jerry was foaming at the mouth to use his Gopher Hawk.  Then, we saw fresh holes on the far side of the lawn, quite a distance from the original mess.  Ziggy was immediately sniffing and digging for gold.  Um, gopher. 

And that’s the last we saw of Digger.  I was pretty sure the new holes were just a stop on his way under the fence to our neighbor’s yard.  The old woman who owns that house had a major stroke a couple of years ago, and no longer ventures outdoors.  Her pot smoking grandsons and their girlfriends have moved in.  No way they will even notice any holes in the yard. 

Well, so long Digger.  Maybe the neighbors are growing pot back there and you can get yourself some good cannabis roots.  Mellow out, chill in your tunnels.  Party on, dude.

Except…it was a clever gopher ruse.

Observe along the rose bushes that border the house in the other direction, through the weeds and to the other fence. 

Little piles of dirt in a line.  Then, a perfect gopher hole, and another, closer and closer to the fence.

No, Digger, no!  Abort, abort!

Not that direction!

Because on the other side of that fence, is the most perfect yard ever.  If I took a photo, you would think it was photoshopped. Pests don’t dare cross the line.  No weeds dare grow. Nobody will be furtively trying to return a Gopher Hawk to Amazon in that house.  They probably have an entire arsenal of extermination weapons.

I put out the humane traps again, but obviously Digger’s tiny brain works better than I gave him credit for. 

Ziggy showed no interest in these holes, not even sniffing, so it could be too late.  I’m still keeping a close watch, however.  Because in that area of our yard are raised vegetable beds.  You see where I’m going with this.  If I find vegetables being eaten from the roots up, we are going to have a problem, my little friend and I.  Don’t mess with my food source, dude.  I have food aggression.  There’s still an unopened Gopher Hawk in my entry hall. 

Don’t make me use it, Digger.  Don’t make me use it.

Ziggy

My “dog” Ziggy is a little…well…he’s weird, OK?

I say “dog” in quotes because we’re not really sure he is a dog. 

Think Lilo and Stitch.

Dog?

Ziggy is a mutt.  To our knowledge, he is part pit bull, dalmatian, and Labrador.  White with very pale brown spots, except on his ears where the spots are prominent, he has a huge black nose, and is fair skinned.  His neck is oddly long, sometimes making me think he might be part Loch Ness Monster, too.

A little over a year ago, we said goodbye to our dog Maggie.  She was a one hundred pound black lab, very smart, and so sweet.  This was the dog my children grew up with.  It was obvious she was growing frail and nearing the end of her life, but I kept praying nothing catastrophic would happen while our oldest son was away at college.  It was not to be. 

When she could barely walk one morning, and her always thumping tail was down and still, we knew we had run out of time.  My daughter rushed back from San Francisco, my other daughter skipped class, and we all gathered around Maggie at the vet’s to say our final goodbyes.  We said a prayer together, thanking Jesus for the years of joy she had given us, and asking him to welcome her into his kingdom.  I whispered into her ear, “My grandfather will take care of you.  He loves dogs.  His name is Joe.”  She raised an eyebrow, and turned her head to look me in the eye.  And we pet her softly as she passed from this life.

Now, Maggie was a couch potato.  But Ziggy?  Ziggy is constantly on the go.  It’s exhausting. We think he has ADHD, hyperactive-impulsive type.  His favorite thing of all time is to chase the damn ball, chew it to pieces, and chase it some more.  He won’t exactly bring it back to you, but he will drop it nearby.  Then he takes off running before you’ve even thrown it.  Jerry says that’s cheating. Ziggy will scratch at the door, go out and immediately turn around to look at you, crouched, ready to take off.  If you don’t throw a ball, but shut the door instead, he scratches at the door again.  When you open it, he looks at you and gets into position to run.  So you close the door.  And he scratches again.  This can go on indefinitely, so we often end up just leaving the dag-burn door open.  It’s easier.

Jerry got so tired of going out and throwing balls that he would throw the ball out the open door from his armchair.  Except he kept missing.  There were ball marks on the ceiling, on the wall, and any number of times I thought he would break the glass door.  For Christmas I bought him a dog ball shooter, so he can sit in his chair and fire a more precise aim out the door.  Twice Ziggy ran so fast chasing the ball that he didn’t pay attention to where he was going and ran headfirst into the fence, breaking a board.  Twice.  Twice, he hit his head so hard against the fence that a board broke, kung fu style.  Then he returned with his ball to play again.  He was completely unaffected.  How could that be?  Is his skull really that thick? Was he trained to use his head as a weapon?  Is he a genetic mutant?

Sometimes Ziggy is so happy when he goes outside, that he leaps for joy, like a gazelle.  He launches himself into the air, front legs forward, rear legs stretched out behind him, and floats through the air in pure joy.  It’s odd and beautiful.  I want to feel that kind of joy!

Another activity he enjoys is spying on our neighbors.  He peaks through a crack or knot hole in the fence, and just stares, not moving a muscle.  It’s like he’s catatonic, he becomes so entranced.  He doesn’t bark or pace back and forth, he just freezes and stares.  I’m tempted to find my own knot hole to see what’s so interesting.

Ziggy’s ears are bent at the top, but sometimes his left ear pops up straight.  And he winks his right eye. There’s a message there, but I’m missing it.  Katie studies American Sign Language, ASL.  Is this some sort of dog sign language, DSL?   I asked her what he was trying to communicate, but she just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, Mom.  He’s weird.”

But by far the strangest thing this guy does is sit on his bucket.  There is a large green plastic bucket with a lid in the backyard that is now officially his.  He likes to knock it around, then when it is on its side, sit his butt down on it, with his front legs on the ground, like a person would sit on a bench.  He has done this many times.  We have seen him playing with his ball, then stop to sit on his bucket, gazing lovingly at the ball in front of him.

Now, Ziggy came from Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF), which is within walking distance of our home.  Just down the street from ARF is the Joint Genome Institute.  Originally this organization was the Human Genome Project, but that Rubik’s Cube has been solved, so they have moved on to other mysteries of DNA.  The Joint Genome Institute is part of the Department of Energy, but I’m pretty sure this is just a ruse.  Does anybody really know what they do?  Their website uses a lot of words to tell you nothing specific.  Wikipedia says “the JGI has been a user facility that advances genomics research in a broad range of disciplines where DNA sequence information is likely to drive scientific discoveries”.  Well that leaves the door wide open, doesn’t it?

Supposedly they work on plant and fungal genomes, and I’m sure they do.  As a cover.  But I think there’s some really strange shit going on there, and my dog is proof.

We are convinced Ziggy is the result of some weird-ass DNA experiment.  Maybe he escaped, maybe they send their living lab rats, er, dogs, to ARF for further observation in the human world.  Maybe when the dog is staring through the fence, he’s being controlled by another source we cannot see, that is downloading information from the pet microchip implanted in his neck that they told us was to identify him if he were ever lost.

We may never know.  We are all probably participating in some larger purpose for humanity. Or warfare.  Or something.  But it’s big, and it’s important.  Probably.  Or he’s just a weird dog.

He fits right in.          

Welcome home, Ziggy.  If that is your real name.