Rico the Dog kills groundhog, chaos ensues

Got a text from (insert “Borat” voice here) my wife the other day at 9:25 a.m. Here it is, in it’s entirety: “Dead groundhog in the plant by the house. I got it out of Rico’s mouth. I couldn’t touch it. Still breathing a little. Sorry. Love you.”

Let’s break this down bit by bit, shall we?

DEAD GROUNDHOG IN THE PLANT BY THE HOUSE: Well, relatively self-explanatory here, except we need to read between the lines. While she was telling me the state of the groundhog (dead) and it’s geographic location (in the plant by the house), she wasn’t actually telling me what she really wanted, which was for me to come home and dispose of the dead groundhog in the plant by the house.

I GOT IT OUT OF RICO’S MOUTH: This is going to take a few paragraphs.

Rico is our dog, a schnauzer we adopted from a local rescue that deals with abandoned dogs from Puerto Rico (hence his name). He is a dummy, but he’s a good boy. Gentle and docile to a fault, except when it comes to the family of groundhogs that live underneath our garage. Those, he hates. It’s his nature.

Last year, he wiped out the entire litter.

This year, he hadn’t snagged one, and, in fact, has spent much of his summer in the yard, just watching the critters, not making a move to hurt them.

Until — in my wife’s telling — this happened.

“I was getting ready for work and I saw a baby groundhog outside and I yelled down to the kids and Haley to look at it and the moment the words came out of my mouth Cujo over there pounced,” she said. “He got it in his mouth and was shaking it back and forth. Everybody screamed.”

“Everybody” in this case being my 9-year-old son, my 4-year-old daughter, and Haley, our sometime summertime babysitter. As for my 7-year-old?

“She went into her happy place,” my wife recalled. “She just started saying, ‘Good job Rico, good job! He’s just playing with the groundhog. That’s all.”

That wasn’t all. My son, taking on the role of man of the house, opened the back door and screamed at Rico to “drop it!”

Rico, though, didn’t hear “drop it!” He heard, “Come on inside with the dead groundhog in your mouth and prance about the house with it,” which is exactly what he did.

This — again according to my wife — resulted in a marked increase in screaming for three of the humans and more retreating to happy places for one. My wife then went 1950s housewife on Rico, grabbing a broom and trying to shoo him and his dead prize out of the house.

She succeeded, and eventually cornered Rico in the backyard, whacked him a few times with the bristles of the broom, and he finally got the message and dropped the dead groundhog, in a plant, by the house.

I COULDN’T TOUCH IT: My wife, sending the women’s liberation movement back 50 years.

STILL BREATHING A LITTLE: Not so dead, eh? Maybe my 7-year-old was right. Maybe Rico was just playing with the groundhog. So I don’t have a dead groundhog, in the plant, by the house. I have a clinging to life groundhog, in the plant, by the house. Brilliant. Apparently, I was supposed to come home and resuscitate the little guy. I Googled “how to save a groundhog.” Little by way of pertinent information was received.

SORRY: Apology accepted, sweetheart.

LOVE YOU: Translation, “thanks for removing the groundhog and either saving it or giving it a proper burial at sea.”

End of text. But not end of story ....

I come home to — if I’m being honest — probably bash a dying baby groundhog over the head with a shovel to put it out of its misery, when miracle of miracles, the groundhog is gone. And not in the “plane of existence” way either; actually gone. Like got up and walked away.

So that’s nice. Looks like my 7-year-old was right. She’ll be pleased to hear this.

By the way, anyone have any good ideas how to get a family of groundhogs out from under my garage?

Jeff Edelstein is a columnist at The Trentonian. He can be reached at jedelstein@ trentonian.com, facebook. com/jeffreyedelstein and @ jeffedelstein on Twitter.