beagle dog, foiled again.

because my life this past week has been overly complicated (that sounds needlessly dramatic! i like it!), and because i'm procrastinating writing this paper that's due wednesday and is 25 percent of my grade but that i still haven't really started yet, i'm going to not talk about those things and instead tell a story about beagle dog.

for the past three weeks or so, beagle dog's favorite new activity has been to position himself in the front hallway and make very loud sniffing noises that are completely audible upstairs and throughout most of the house. he looks like this:

















after about a week of sniffing i was pretty sure something must have crawled under the house and perhaps died, but then the loud and obnoxious sniffing continued for so long that i assumed the thing under the house must still be there and be alive because if it was dead surely it would smell really bad. like that time the squirrels took over the attic.

then last friday, beagle dog had assumed his daily watch on the floor, nose to the wall, and i was like, why are you doing this again, you weird dog? and that was when i heard the crying.

and then i thought: kitties! there are kitties under the house! beagle dog is smarter than i thought! i want a kitty!

on saturday, alvin put the dogs in the front yard and pulled part of the siding off the back of the house to see if the kittens were ok. there were three of them and they were cute and fuzzy and seemed fine, but the skanky stray cat who staked out our house as the perfect place to have her litter of kittens? she was nowhere to be found and was probably off somewhere being skanky again.*

we tried to lure out the kittens by blinding them with a flashlight, and they were totally going for it and had crawled most of the way out from under the house when beagle dog escaped into the backyard, crawled into the six inches of crawl space under the house, and then got stuck in the wall. unfortunately, he could see the kittens and wanted to eat them? play with them? who knows? since he was stuck between studs he chose to bark at them, and no amount of coaxing could get him out from under the house. the kitties were afraid and the dog was stuck in the wall and that was not how i envisioned saturday going, though the one positive aspect was that beagle dog's bark is much quieter when there's wall and floor acting as a buffer between him and me. also, i might have learned some valuable lesson about leaving things alone, or something, though knowing me i seriously doubt i learned anything.

we were debating where to cut through the wall from the inside of the house in order to free beagle dog and thereby save the kitties when the momma cat showed up and totally saved the day by luring him out. beagle dog saw his chance to chase another cat, one that there was a possibility of catching and playing with, and decided he would dislodge himself from the wall and chase her into the yard. it was very smart of her, and very lucky for us, and if i could have put beagle dog in time out at that point i so would have. we trapped him and lectured him about why he was bad, but i'm pretty sure he still has no idea why what he did was totally unacceptable.

the skanky smart momma cat took her kitties away that night and we reattached the siding to the house so, i hope, nothing can crawl back in. every once in awhile beagle dog stops to smell the wall, though for the most part both of us have given up our dreams of having a kitten to play with.

*i don't actually believe these things; i just say them because i can.