Dear Dust

I’m bored silly. With this site. With my boyfriend. With food. With movies. With the world.

Seriously.

Stacy

Dear Dust

I am so sick of technology. I have an iPad and an Android and a Nook and a Gateway desktop. They all constantly need updating and downloading and tweaking and new peripheral gadgets. My camera is out of date, my music files are degrading, my thumb drive is infected with a worm. Who said all this stuff was an improvement? And don’t even get me started on tweeting and checking my Facebook status. It’s a deluge of input, most of which seems to make my life harder instead of easier. How do I get out from under this avalanche of silicone?

Leona

I walk my dogs very early in the morning. I get out of bed at 4:30 and let the dogs out into the back yard and get myself dressed. Then I feed them and let them back out in the yard again, in hopes of not having to employ my flashlight and my tummy-pack full of poopy bags on the walk. There is usually a lovely breeze by the Bay of Biscayne, while it is still dark. We do about four or five miles at a fast pace, except for the occasional stop for Kimchee. Brooklyn is the bionic dog with more parts than not made from titanium. She is dedicated to her walks and never slows down. Kimchee is another story. She has a voracious appetite for repulsive things. It is this appetite, which cuts down our time.

In the daylight, Kimchee eats a minimum of a dozen lizards a day. I know because her actions are visible in the daytime. I can’t see the things on the ground on the morning walk since it is quite dark. The problem is the infinite numbers of frog carcasses on the road.

Frogs do not look both ways before crossing the street.

Let me explain a frog’s plan for getting out of the way of an oncoming car. You know those movies where the beautiful young woman in high heels is being chased by a car at high speed? The beautiful woman runs down the road in front of the speeding car. This is her best plan for escape. She assumes she can outrun the car in her stylish high heels. I have yet to see one of these chases where the woman veers off the road into the bushes or trees where the car cannot follow. She stays right there in the middle of the road and runs ahead of the car. These women are using “The Frog Method.” I’m here to tell you that “The Frog Method” does not work. The car smashes into the woman or the frog every single time.

Kimchee’s greatest enthusiasm is reserved for frog jerky. She can really scarf. I get a tug and turn and she’s back walking again. She’s wily. She doesn’t chew. She’s learned that whenever she chews, I’ll realize what she’s doing and tell her to drop it. She is a very obedient dog and follows all my commands, but if I do not give her a command, she thinks she’s home free. She hides her treasure way back in her mouth, but usually I can tell by the tug that she’s scarfed something up. That’s when I have to use my fingers to pry out the frog jerky.

Frogs are supposed to be poisonous to dogs. I can only surmise that the car-flattening squooshes out all the poison, because Kimchee has never been sick.

Yesterday, I brought them home after a walk while it was still dark. I took off their leashes and went to fill their bowls up with fresh water. Then I noticed that Kimchee was chewing something. I told her to drop it and she did. It was a huge knucklebone from a cow, I think, or a pig. She had picked up that bone at some point and secreted it in her cheek, like a chipmunk. I never noticed that there was anything was in her mouth. She is taking on chipmunk behavior now, sneaky chipmunk behavior.

We have four enormous Fichus trees flanking our front yard. This time of year they drop zillions of red, sticky berries. They are fermenting now, which gives off a sickly sweet scent. The only problem they ever posed before was the sticky fruit would adhere to cars and the bottoms of your shoes and you’d drag it inside and get it on the rugs.

Kimchee decided this year to taste them and has taught Brooklyn the wonders of eating fermenting Fichus berries. Brooklyn and Kimchee now wander about on the bricks, scarfing up as many as they can. They stand by the front door acting as though they have to pee, when, in fact, they are simply jonesing for more fichus berries. My dogs are drunk by nightfall every night. They consume mass quantities of these alcoholic berries every day. I expect that when the berries stop dropping and their source of alcohol dries up, the dogs might go into some sort of distress. I’ll probably have to serve them a bowl of wine with their dinner now. My dogs are alcoholics.