I knew I would have no trick-or-treaters since I live out in The Blair Witch Project and have seen only two monsters in the twenty-some years I’ve been out here.
That doesn’t stop me from buying the obligatory bags of my favorite candies every year, just in case. I was halfway through both bags and one peanut butter cup away from a sugar coma, when I decided to tackle a long-overdue job: changing the dead lightbulb in my refrigerator. I couldn’t remember when it had gone out—obviously quite a while ago.
Once the fridge’s dark recesses finally had illumination, I noticed a plastic container in the far back right corner, on the bottom shelf, just above the veggie-crisper drawer.
I don’t know what possessed me to open it, but I did. I felt sure I’d chanced onto a possible cure for some new locker-room disease called shibola, a hybrid of shingles and Ebola. I wonder if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has researched the curative power of green peas from the 1980s.
On the off chance I would not, in fact, be awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine, I immediately carried the noxious container out to the burn pile, away from the house, to keep the dogs from finding it.
Later that night, when I took the dogs out for their evening constitutional, I couldn’t find Scout for a few minutes. We can’t figure out what kind of dog he is. He’s a fifty-pound, skinny, long-legged solid-black tornado of teeth and toenails. He usually doesn’t let me out of his sight. I eventually glanced over and saw him high atop the burn pile, perusing his kingdom, as if he’d just discovered a hidden kitty litter box. I screamed, “Scout!” He came running—the coolest kid on the playground.
I didn’t know how much of the offending entree he’d scarfed down, but I knew I had to keep an eye on him.
Later on, as I was working on a lesson I was to give the next morning at the prison, I heard what sounded like a plunger in a commode and knew precisely what was happening. I raced into my bedroom and heard Scout under the bed. I kept trying to coddle him. “Come on out, little buddy.”
But alas, it was too late. When I got the courage to look underneath, I saw total carnage. I was trying to think how I would ever be able to clean that much vomit out from under my bed without taking the whole thing apart, when Scout started up again.
I couldn’t even try to coax him out. I just watched in horrified fascination as he projectile-vomited everything he’d eaten since he was born.
I thought, Oh, look—more peas.
He must have felt a little better, because he crawled out from under the bed and looked at me as if he’d hurled demons into a herd of pigs.
I took him outside for a while and watched him wander around as if he were in a daze. I was a little concerned and called him to me. He will usually run as fast as possible until he gets right to my legs and then come to a screeching halt; however, this time, he came at me, tilted his head to the right, and plowed right into my knees, causing hyperextension and considerable, unnecessary pain.
He was stumbling and weaving. I was horrified. I carried him into the house and called Cliff Peck, one of the top-five vets in the universe. I screamed, “I’ve killed Scout!”
When I told him what had happened, he laughed and said, “Dude, he’s drunk.”
“What? He ate moldy—something with peas in it.”
Cliff said, “Yep. Some molds are intoxicants. He’s just drunk. Watch him for a while. Give him Pepto-Bismol if you have any, and keep an eye on him. Don’t let him eat tomorrow.”
So I squirted some PB down Scout’s throat and made him lie down in his bed so I could continue to work on my prison sermon.
Scout just sat there looking at me. He leaned his head away from me and glared at me from the corner of his eye. He held a paw up to me as if he were trying to figure out which one was really me. All of a sudden, he was channeling Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. I kept waiting for him to say, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”
Suddenly, without any warning, he vomited again. I was just able to maneuver his head over the edge of the couch before he wretched all over me. I went cold when I looked down and saw red in the vomit—and peas. “Oh no! He’s bleeding internally! He’s dying! Oh, wait. Pepto-Bismol.”
At that moment, I remembered the mess under the bed and decided I needed to go clean that up before—
Oh no.
I grabbed paper towels and a plastic grocery bag and ran to my room. I threw myself onto my belly and looked under the bed. There was nothing.
Just as I was thinking, What in the world? Chester, my brown-and-tan beagle-Catahoula mix, who is typically fairly adroit at jumping up onto the bed, slammed into the side of it and glanced over at me with his tongue hanging out the side of his snout. With his eyes squarely focused on mine, Chester slowly slid down the edge of the bed and onto his back haunches.
He just sat there panting and staring, desperately trying to focus on me. It reminded me of someone watching the old game Pong on a primordial computer monitor. Back and forth, side to side.
Obviously, Chester felt it his responsibility to help Scout live up to Proverbs 26:11.
I was getting a little nauseated at that point. Even telling the story is making me a bit woozy. I don’t want to say the word vomit again. I’m going to change it to something a tad bit more palatable. Since I had a few similar experiences as my dogs in my younger days, I’m going to use the word vermouth, a botanically induced wine.
At that point, Chester peered sideways at me, got up, and began turning in awkward circles. I knew what was coming. I grabbed his collar to pull him outside. He got away from me, jumped up onto the couch, and vermouthed—a lot. There were peas.
At that juncture, I had two dogs vermouthing simultaneously. At the same time, I screamed at Falkor, my black Labasset, who had jumped up onto the back of the couch, ready to high-dive into the vermouth. He was perched like a vulture on a telephone wire looking down at roadkill. “Falkor, get outa here!” He was crushed. As if I’d kicked a homeless person away from a twenty-five-foot-long smorgasbord. Whatever. “Get out!”
Finally, at about midnight, the dogs seemed to calm down. I went outside and buried what was left of the demon casserole from Dante’s third level of hell. Something straight out of a Stephen King novel.
It seemed I hadn’t buried it deep enough. The next night, I was doing laundry, and Gawa, my little rat terrier, who is almost completely blind but apparently has a keen sense of smell, was out by the burn pile, high-stepping like a drum major. She was missing only the baton.
Good gravy. Is there no half-life to this stuff? The only things that will survive a nuclear holocaust are cockroaches and peas that have been vermouthed.
