Wimsey's Blog: Diary of a Manhattan Bloodhound #311

 

Entry # 311

July 12, 2013

Hello Everyone, Wimsey here on Manhattan’s Upper West Side where the combination of the Great Fourth of July Yard Cleanout and the revolting weather have made for a paucity of blog posts.  There are also very few pictures of me owing to my reluctance to be outdoors at all in this weather. For those of you who don’t live on the East Coast or don’t have friends or relatives who do, we have been having Endless August for the past two months and it is hard to say who is more cheesed off about it-- my human Maria and her friend Elizabeth, or me.  Four times a day the following happens:

Me: “I wish to go out now,” I say, squeaking either my Hedgie in Elizabeth’s face at her apartment or Doggie in Maria’s at home.

Human: “Your wish is my command, oh Great Hound!”

But then, I get outside and it’s all,

 

Me: NOOOO!!!!!!  IT’S STILL SUMMER OUT HERE!  I WISH TO GO BACK INSIDE TO THE AIR CONDITIONING IMMEDIATELY!

Then it’s all:

Humans: “But you need to poop and pee! Please. Just a little walk. We’ll stay in the shade. How about a cookie. Or a piece of turkey…”

And that doesn’t include all the suiting up I have to do into cooling coats and raincoats to deal with the heat and the tropical storms that we’ve been having.

But to quickly catch up—over the 4^th of July my human Maria had a four-day weekend which meant that I did not spend the full week with Elizabeth who looks after me (read: caters to my every whim) during the day. And although Maria does her best to cater to me, it’s just not the same without Elizabeth who wears turkey and at least two kinds of crunchy snacks around her waist, has a closet full of bully sticks and can easily be prevailed upon to augment my kibble bowl with the contents of her fridge.

But turkey and crunchy snacks are not the only thing Elizabeth wears.  In a previous post I shared my masterful Guide to Fashion to help explain why my humans look like escapees from What Not To Wear and last week exceeded even my expectations.  Elizabeth donned a bright blue rain slicker, added green boots and dressed me in my red raincoat. We looked like hooded refugees from a Crayola box, a fact not lost on a Spanish tourist who came running over to take a picture.  And it was clear from her gestures that she wanted Elizabeth in the photo as well, and trust me, no one ever wants my humans in the photo unless they look ridiculous.  Like when Elizabeth sits next to me on a park bench and I loom over her head and decorate her hair with drool. It’s a crowd pleaser.

But I digress.  The other tenant of our little shared backyard moved out and after twelve years of residence she had filled the garden with an astonishing collection of stuff including (but not limited to) a moldy, plastic above ground pool, rusting gym equipment, dead potted plants, an assortment of rusting barbecue grills, a shop vac, many, many chairs and tables, a rotting bench, a non-rotting rusting bench, a giant heat lamp, mosquito torches and a plethora of  “decorative” cement and plastic objects ranging from the classical to the ridiculous.  In the latter category, let’s just say garden gnomes have nothing on garden frogs and the yard had come to resemble the site of a biblical plague. Anyway, my humans and I spent a large part of the four-day weekend clearing out the stuff so at some future point actual yard work can begin.  I myself supervised the whole operation which somehow resulted in a lot of “Get out of there Wimsey’s from my humans.  And all the delicacies I managed to consume resulted in a bit of an upset tummy which resulted in me deciding to poop on a shovel that my humans were using which I think is a very efficient way of fertilizing a garden.

But in addition to creative gardening, summer also brings out the creativity in TV writers. Now entertaining viewers whose tastes have become jaded by stories involving actually possible natural disasters such as fires, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and the like as well as by natural disasters that are theoretically possible but unlikely such as asteroid collisions and alien invasions, is no easy task. I mean, we’ve seen every possible kind of horror, including those wrought by wildlife such as swarms of annoyed birds, vicious killer bees, non itsy-bitsy spiders ferocious grizzly bears and even prehistoric velociraptors.  So you can just imagine a group of tapped out TV writers shuffling their index cards of natural disasters and wildlife terrors to inflict on their group of stock characters when two cards accidentally fall to the floor and the light bulb goes off igniting a spark of video genius.  If people are afraid to go out of their houses because of tornados and are afraid to go into the water because of sharks, what could be better than a tornado of sharks! And SharkNado is born!  It’s Jaws meets The Wizard of Oz except without the talent. (For the uninitiated and social media-less, SharkNado is a real TV show—even someone possessing my high level of creativity could not have made this up).  However, even more fearsome than a SharkNado is the dreaded HoundNado!

 

A CNN Special Report: HoundNado Terrorizes New York City

Wolf Blitzer:  Hello I’m Wolf Blitzer. Thanks for joining us.  We interrupt our usual programming of violence, mayhem and gore to present a CNN Special Report on a Fearsome Natural Disaster afflicting Our Nation’s most important city, New York. I am joined by my colleague Anderson Cooper.

Anderson Cooper:  Thanks Wolf.  You forgot to mention that for our more squeamish viewers our regular interrupted programming also includes coverage from Washington where the violence, mayhem and gore are strictly verbal.

Wolf: Thank you Anderson. I stand corrected. The carnage in Washington is a CNN staple. I had proposed a Congressional cage-fighting segment to bring our political coverage more into line with our regular programming but the producers thought that the level of violence might be in poor taste.

Anderson: That never stopped them before.

Wolf: Yes, I know, but I think the fight card got too crowded.  Now on to our coverage of the HoundNado which we can only hope will result in even more ratings topping violence, mayhem and gore than the usual stuff we air. Tell us Anderson, will there be the horrific scenes that we recently witnessed and brought into our viewer’s living rooms, as was the case during the SharkNado in California?

 

Anderson: We can only hope, Wolf. It would have been great if we had a SharkNado here but some people say that New York already has a SharkNado.  It’s called Wall Street.

Wolf:  Good point. Also, I understand that New Yorkers feel that their natural disasters should be tonier and more sophisticated than those that afflict the rest of the country.

Anderson:  Sharks wearing black?

Wolf: I don’t think so.  Bring our viewers up to speed Anderson.  What do scientists think is causing all these AnimalNados apart from a drive for summer ratings?

Anderson:  No one really knows Wolf, and scientists were too busy this week figuring out that an uninhabitable planet 63 light years away from earth is colored blue.  They were too excited to devote much time to anything else. But it’s a pretty safe bet to blame it on global warming. Everyone knows that global warming is bad and everyone knows that SharkNados are bad, so Q.E.D.

Wolf:  I like that idea.  But tell us about the HoundNado.  We know that sharks have only one purpose in life and that is to tear human flesh for our cinematic pleasure but what do Hounds do?

 

Anderson: What don’t they do, Wolf? The Hound is a much more complex and devious creature than the shark and is just as destructive, albeit much cuter.  For instance we have reports that IKEA and Ethan Allen don’t have a stick of furniture left and tufts of foam, goose down and polyester are choking the streets from all the mattress stores. Also all 858 acres of Central Park are now one giant hole and supermarkets, restaurants and gelato stands have been stripped bare. Mayor Bloomberg, however, was pleased to note in his news conference that since the HoundNado left all the leafy green vegetables intact—apparently Hounds don’t like these any more than we do-- the disaster is actually a victory for New York’s anti-obesity program.

Wolf:  Yes, I had heard that he considers the HoundNado an inspirational event and is thinking of mandating that supermarkets only be allowed to sell leafy green vegetables and water. But did the Hounds drink all the soda greater than 160z too?

Anderson: No but they punctured all the bottles so that they could play with them. Also air quality in the city is deteriorating rapidly due to all the Hound hair so citizens are advised to wear masks.

Wolf:  Will the masks protect against all the drool as well?

 

Anderson:  Only partially, Wolf.  There is no such thing as complete protection against drool but wearing a full length Hefty bag is being advised.  Also there is a thick layer of drool drifting up the Hudson whose environmental impact is unknown.  There seems to be no way to get rid of the stuff.

Wolf: And speaking of drool Anderson, there are reports that all traffic has come to a standstill and people are abandoning their cars because no one can see out of the windows.

Anderson: Yes, Wolf, drool and windows seem to have a powerful attraction for one another, but it is probably a good thing to stay out of cars since Hounds are very fond of motor vehicles and often labor under the illusion that they can drive them.

Wolf:  This just in, Anderson.  Major Bloomberg has announced that under his administration and with the assistance of the HoundNado New York no longer has a garbage or rat problem.

Anderson: Or a fertilizer problem either I would imagine.

Well you get the idea.  The mind boggles at all the possibilities.  Steven Spielberg has a lot to answer for.  Of course like sharks, we Hounds are also insatiable predators, only we relentlessly seek out and consume our humans’ food, money and possessions. Also, luckily for us, their hearts.

Until next time,

Wimsey (Nado)