Animal Dreams

As any of you who are patient enough to have read this blog for a while may remember, we fell in love with a goat that we named "Gaston" last winter. We were in France with our friends the Fabians, walking around the village in the crisp, frosty air, when we came upon Gaston, with his sweet little yellow eyes, bleating "Why am I the only creature stuck out in this arctic freeze besides the American idiots?"... or some French equivalent. We fed him, took his picture, talked to him, and generally made asses of ourselves - I'm sure the village ladies were peeking out behind their curtains, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes in Gallic amusement.

As if that wasn't exciting enough - there's an update! When the Fabians returned to Le Gue de la Chaine this summer, they went to visit Gaston and - voila - the farmer who owns Gaston was cleaning up the pen. They struck up a conversation and found out that Gaston's real name is "Popeye" - very macho, don't you think? While deep in conversation, Margaret (Madame Fabian) had a brilliant idea - could she lease Gaston from the farmer for a few days to mow down some weeds? Of course, said the farmer, secretly thinking how he couldn't wait to tell his wife how many euros he charged this lady from California so Gaston, er, Popeye could eat some lovely new cuisine.

Well... everybody was pleased with this plan, except Gaston/Popeye, who refused to eat the long grass, and instead bleated his head off and ate a hole in the neighbor's hedge, which now has to be paid for. Can't help but think something was lost in translation.

On a more somber note, we lost a wonderful friend this week. Jim and Sara's bulldog, Omar, was not what you'd call handsome - unless you were a lady bulldog, I guess. But he had an excess of charisma... extreme life force... especially when he catapulted all 65 muscular pounds of himself onto your lap when you were distracted by something else. Dick likened this leap to a fire hydrant being thrown onto his balls, not a good thing for a guy. Omie used to try to get my attention by doing what he perceived as bounding around playfully, which was more like a canine version of "white men can't jump"... but he tried, he really did. Then if I still didn't pay attention to him, he'd steal his brother Dylan's tennis ball and run off with it, shaking his head and growling... and if that still didn't get me, he'd eat a few rocks... got a rise out of me every time.

When we waved goodbye as Jim and Sara drove off on vacation in June, we never dreamed that we wouldn't see Omie again. When we got the news that he'd been run over and killed, the whole neighborhood mourned. "I need my Omie fix!" said our tennis friend Mike. "He was such a funny little fart..." sniffed Suzi. The only non-mourner was Vicky the cat, who showed her face in the back yard for the first time in several months. All in all, it's very sad - we'll miss him - but we know there are probably plenty of warm laps, slobbery tennis balls and really tasty rocks in doggie heaven.