Who took the ham? And other tales of pets
When I was a kid, my mom left frozen chicken and other meats out to thaw so they would be ready to cook for dinner. Even in the summer. No one ever got sick. Everyone did this and it was fine.
Well, one summer’s day, my mom left a ham on the kitchen table to thaw while she took my two brothers and me to the park.
We left our dog, Taffy, our beautiful Golden Retriever, sleeping quite content, in a sunny spot in the kitchen. We never had to worry about her because she never jumped up on a table or couch. She was perfectly happy to accept table scraps that might end up on the floor. And, she loved Friday nights, when my mom let us have potato chips and soda when we watched our favorite TV show, “The Flintstones.”
We snuck potato chips to her when mom wasn’t looking.
So, we come home from our day at the park and my mom shrieks.
“Where did my ham go?” she cries. “I left it on the table, right?” she asks us.
We all nodded, yes. Suddenly, my brother, Dan, says: “I see something!” We followed a trail of grease around the corner and who should we see but our gluttonous dog, Taffy.
She ate the whole ham. Taffy, of course, looks up at us with her guilty eyes, like dogs do, and sheepishly lies back on her rug. After things settled down, since my dad was away on a fishing trip, my mom took us to McDonald’s.
We forgave Taffy. She was such a sweet dog and never did anything like that again. After she crossed the rainbow bridge, my brother, John, found Jessie, another Golden Retriever. We kept a better eye on him, although he got table scraps sometimes, and toast when we watched our favorite Saturday cartoons, like “Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.”
One day, Jessie was bugging my mom in the kitchen when she was cooking. She opened a bottom drawer to get out the aluminum foil and lost her grip on the roll. Well, the roll popped out of the drawer and the aluminum foil rolled out over the kitchen floor. Jessie freaked out.
He could not get out of our kitchen fast enough! So, for years after this incident, anytime our mom wanted to get Jessie out of her kitchen, she just opened that drawer and he was gone! “Beep, beep!” Just like “Road Runner.”