On Friday last I ran some errands. Upon my return I heard the cleaning lady yelling at Morgan the Wonder Dog. “You get down from there, naughty dog!” and then the reply, “Ha, ha, ho ho, you’re not Josh, I don’t have to do what you say.” Now, this came as a surprise, because I thought Morgan the Wonder Dog spoke only to me. In any case, up on the kitchen counter, staring intently at a squirrel hanging upside down on the bird feeder, was Morgan the Wonder Dog.
“What are you doing there?” I asked menacingly.
“She made me do it, she always makes me get up here.”
“She was up there all morning,” snitched the cleaning lady. “I didn’t put her up there,” she added nervously.
“I know, I know,” I reassured; “she has quite an imagination.”
Twice again the dog was up on the counter, either staring at the squirrel at the bird feeder or just staring at the bird feeder in anticipation. I determined to put a stop to these shenanigans. Thinking that the squirrel was aided and abetted by the table we have under the window, I went out onto the deck to take it away, carefully placing it along the side of the deck near the enclosed porch’s roof. It being a beautiful day, I left Morgan outside on patrol.
A cry from the cleaning lady alerted that something was wrong. Again. I went to the kitchen window but there was no squirrel. I looked out the window and saw that there was also no dog. She, in her infinite wisdom, had used the table I had so conveniently placed at her disposal to abscond from the deck onto the adjacent porch roof. So, there she was, running to the edge of the roof, stopping, looking down, wondering if she could survive the eight foot drop to the ground, backing off, running up again, considering again, backing off again, but I could see that her courage was mounting.
Then I saw the cat. “Oh, gods,” I implored, “don’t let her see the cat.” I opened the living room window and called to her. “Morgan, come here, I have cheese for you.” “No you don’t,” she said as she edged closer to the edge. “I’ll get it, you wait there,” I implored. So I ran the length of the living room, turned right through the foyer, right again through the dining room, through the breakfast room, into the kitchen where I threw open the refrigerator and tried to remember which kind of cheese she liked best—mozzarella, cheddar, Swiss? I grabbed a block of cheddar and retraced my steps, sticking my head out the window and ... no dog. She had jumped back over the rail onto the deck. To the deck I sauntered, gave her some cheese, brought her back in the house and sat down to work, again.
Another shriek from the cleaning lady. Now what? Gevalt! I’d left the window open and out through it Morgan had leaped onto the roof of the enclosed porch. Again. “Damn!” “Stay,” I commanded, rushed through the house to the refrigerator to get some cheese, back to the window where the dog had remained. I offered her the food, she came in, I closed the window. Our problems were not yet over.
I had noticed that the squirrel walked along the deck railing and leaped from it onto the sill of the kitchen window, from which it then jumped onto the birdfeeder. OK, what can I do about this? “Crisco!” was the obvious answer. If I coated the sill with a thin veneer of Crisco, the squirrel would leap, skid and fall to the deck floor, hopefully without doing itself any injury. So that’s what I prepared to do. What I hadn’t noticed was that as I opened the window, the squirrel was already in mid-flight towards it. It hit my outstretched arm and ricocheted up my arm into the kitchen. The other thing I’d not noticed was that the cat I’d spotted before had by now managed to get onto the deck and seeing its prey jump through our kitchen window, it decided on the spur of the moment to follow suit. So now I had a panicked squirrel being chased by a cat who only too late realized that there was a dog in the house who hated cats.
My right hand was also coated in Crisco. The next thing I knew, the trio was running first around, then through the breakfast room, into the dining room where the cleaning lady was standing on the radiator holding her skirt above her knees shouting (actually it more like screaming) something in Andalusian. The squirrel dove under the living room couch where the cat thought for a moment it would stalk it until suddenly remembering the dog hot on its tail, so it leaped five feet up onto the mantle, skidding along the surface, sending chackas scattering in all directions. Then, as the cat was skidding, the dog chasing it barking, the squirrel cowering, Penney came home.
As the door opened, the dog, always anxious to be outside, gave up pursuit of the cat, and headed out the door; the cat, seeing its chance to escape, jumped down from the mantle and fled after her. The squirrel who was watching all this from its vantage point below the couch took its opportunity to run through Penney’s legs to safety. The cleaning lady was still on top of the radiator screaming in Andalusian, skirt hiked. Penney took a quick look at the scene as it was unfolding and asked, “How come the cat is chasing the dog and the squirrel is chasing the cat?” This was too difficult to explain, so rather than try, we helped the cleaning lady down from the radiator and the three of us cleaned up the mess.
And what does all of this have to do with the Jewish Question, you ask? What? You have to ask? How do you prepare your house for Passover?
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