When did you want something this badly?

It’s a story of passion. A story that hurts my teeth to share.

You’ll understand in a minute, if that is, you can suspend any city ways you have and travel for a moment with me down to this remote coastal marsh where Husband and I now live.

Excitement comes from adventures like crabbin’ for dinner. Yes, crab is a verb around these parts. There are all sorts of ways to do it. We prefer the lazy man’s way of using large wire crab traps. Picture barbed wire boxes about 2’x2’. There’s a smallish opening for the crabs to crawl in to get at the bait cylinder in the center. Once they are in, they can’t figure out how to crawl out.

Which would be to suggest that the crabs are dumb.

Only this is one of my stories, which of course means it’s the humans who will turn out to be the big dummies.

Imagine things being blissfully quiet.

Quiet, in that most days the only things you really hear are the marsh hens laughing at us and the breeze braiding its way through the Spanish moss hanging from the oak trees.

With all this, Pup is in heaven. We can open the door and let her explore. Or if she doesn’t feel like coming back to the house right away after a walk, that’s no problem.

The summer heat keeps her from wandering off too far.

This is why Husband and I weren’t concerned yesterday when we hadn’t seen her for a bit.

It was awfully quiet out there with her gone, but we figured she was fine. Cue the human dummy music.

Oh, she was more than fine.

She was busy.

It was only hours after she sauntered back to the screened in porch that we discovered what she had been up to.

We later came to realize that Pup had made her way to the dock where the recently used crab traps sat baking in the early summer sun.

The frayed barbed wire told the story. Pup chewed her way through the outer barbed wire to get to the center cylinder. All this just to get to the scraps of oily fish leftover from catching our dinner the night before. We sat back in wonder. Wonder at how Pup had any teeth left in her mouth.

Wonder at our human stupidity.

Wonder at what it feels like to want something that badly.

It’s been a minute for me. What about you, Dear Reader?

Do you remember the last time you wanted something so much you would chew through barbed wire to get it?

I can’t remember the last time I wanted something with such passion.

Does that make me old and worn out?

I’m counting myself lucky. To have my sanity. My teeth.

And a pup who just reminded me needs a bit more supervision.