After a recent close-encounter-of-a-wild-kind, I thought I’d ask Jazzy to guest post this week’s adventure. It took an extra biscuit and the promise of two bacon-cheese flavored beggin’ strips, but I managed to convince her. It especially seemed fitting since L. L. Bean is under the impression that she and I are the same person. So, without further ado, I turn my flashing cursor over to her:

For a chick that is one-hundred-one-and-a-half years old, I’m still a pretty spry and spunky bitch bee’otch. (I promised my human I would keep this post ‘Rated G’ since she writes for children, but shouldn’t kids learn that there’s nothing wrong with calling a female dog a bitch? A crotchety next-door neighbor? Maybe. But not a dog. Some of my best friends are bitches.)

Now, where was I?
Oh, spry and spunky…yup, I might not be able to charge up and down a staircase like I used to, but at fourteen I take pride in the fact that I can still strike fear into a deer munching berries on the driveway, shock a raven up off the ground sending her screeching for her Mamma, and turn a duck upside down with a simple bark and wag of my tail.

Why just the other day, I damn  darn near caught myself a wild coyote. Yes, I said coyote, canis latrans. You might find this hard to believe (that I know the species and that I would chase after a wild animal) even though my eyes are glazed over by cataracts the size of flattened mouse droppings (damn darned cats, ALL kinds). Regardless, I am still a huntress, a tracker with great prowess thanks to my nose, which has remained totally unaffected by age. No wonder though, my olfactory organ has something like 300 million scent receptors, whereas you, my friendly homosapien, have only ruffly roughly 5 million.

Please forgive my monkey brain – I’m not used to writing down my adventures in a linear fashion, if at all. Like I was saying – there I was, just moseying along the hilltop when the wind shifted, carrying upon it a hint of wildness. Temptation stared me in the face, literally. It jerked my head off the ground, away from the tantalizing turd I had been sniffing. It raised my tail and bent a paw – the classic retriever pose. Poised for the chase, I gathered my strength, waiting for the next puff of air to slip up my nostrils and direct me to its origin.

In two shakes of a lambs tail (my favorite meal, by the way) the scent of wild dog sent me scrambling over the multitude of rocks and boulders jutting from dried brush. Nose to the ground, I rrrrushed down the steep incline, oblivious to my human’s repeated whistles and calls to “get the focaccia back here, you stinking stubborn daughter-of-a-bee’otch!”

To the further tune of blah, blah, blah, I chased after him until suddenly, he stopped. He turned. He stared.

“Jazzy!” my human called.

I payed her no mind and continued to follow my nose. What else could I do? It’s attached to my face. Coyote turned away and headed toward the trees. After a few steps he stopped again…turned again…then stared…

and yowled, “You must be kidding bee’otch. You’ll never catch me.”

He was right. At least for that day, he was. But sure as the forest of white hairs on my chiny-chin-chin, it’s not over until I bark it is so! All I need to do first is figure out a way to untether myself from this ball-and-chain…

Thank you for sharing Jazzy…
and thank you, dear reader, for joining us today.