Stick Makes a Ping Rather Than a Thump

July 8, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:   When I get out of bed this morning, judging from the block of sunlight radiating in at the bathroom window, I guess that it must be about noon.  But when I go down into the kitchen, the clock is pointing at 8:30.  The coffee’s been made, my computer’s been turned on, but Moi is not around: looks like she’s gone to work again today.   She left without telling me anything about Mway, but I assume she hasn’t taken her for a morning walk, and that’ll be up to me.  Mway is lying in the hallway, watching my every move, perking her head up when I go downstairs for a second mug of coffee.  Last night when I came home from work, Moi was already asleep, and she had draped a bed sheet across the hallway, apparently to direct the cool air from the air conditioner in my bedroom window into her bedroom.  Moi can’t sleep to the sound of a fan or air conditioner, so the only unit we have in the house is the one in my bedroom, far enough away so she usually can’t hear it.  I’ve just finished a second cigarette and most of a second mug of coffee, and I’m ready to take Mway out for her morning walk.  Both Moi and I have to work tonight, and I have to leave in the late afternoon; I suspect that in the afternoon, one of us will only take Mway out into the back yard to throw stick.

State of the Path:  As I use the “pro-quality” stick like a walking stick, it makes a high-pitched ping, rather than a thump, when I tap it against the dry white ground.  Larvae of some sort are crawling up a web on a small black walnut tree.  Cabbage butterflies flit among the goldenrod.  Gray fuzzy seeds flare from the top of the Canada thistle.   I see a new wildflower, something with pink petals.  The elderberries are still green.  I don’t bother to whack back any briar or weed that be might sticking into the path, as I stumble along on the hard ground, sometimes into patches of bare ground just outside the path.  Along the creek, a goldenrod-type plant has withering top leaves and dry, almost black, stems, and the plants poke up from a ground covered with brown grass.   Invisible birds squeak and squawk in the trees.  I hear a rustling and see a movement in the weeds on the ridge around bug land.  Mway hears the rustling too, and starts sniffing to investigate, but I tell her to stay away.  A honeysuckle forms a canopy over the break in the ridge, and I have to duck my head to pass through.  The honeysuckle berries look plump and juicy; their liveliness in this heat looks unnatural.  Beyond the ridge, I see a little city of two butterflies and a number of fly- and bee-like insects sucking nectar from one thistle.  On the way to the clearing, the anthill is one spot where I regularly place a foot; the anthill sticks up, hard and dry like a manhole covering.   

State of the Creek:  The three puddles have still resisted drying up completely, though each is slowly shrinking away.  The one beyond the big trees is only about 3 feet long and a foot and a half wide; a few striders sit on top of its water, immobile dots.  Mway doesn’t even bother to go into the puddle below the swale from bug land.

The Fetch:  Up in the clearing, Mway starts out energetically enough, but after about the third toss, she drops the stick then flicks her tongue and moves her mouth against a wad of saliva.  Either she’s dehydrated or she’s bitten into a nettle or something.  She only fetches the stick one more time, and on the path back to the house, she even drops it.  So I have to carry it back, and Mway doesn’t even bother to try to grab it away from me.