Idlebones

Resurrection Dog

That little cute fur ball of a dog that I buried in my back garden last week has come back to haunt me. And he’s got a rotten sense of humour.

I spent most of last week in Cork and Wexford at various meetings, and was therefore oblivious to the fact that there was a bit of a man hunt on for me. There has been ads on shop windows, in the newspaper and even on the radio looking for a man answering my discription. I’m surprised none of my friends heard it to be honest. Mind you, the ad did mention my first name and discribe me as “a man who drinks in Clarkes, and brought a dog home with him last Tuesday night”, so I can’t think why any body would have recognised that as me.
I’m a bit annoyed I missed all of the fuss, to be honest. I came back late Friday night and found out on entering my local, that the owners of the dog I had found had been in looking for him. Unfortunetly, the barmaid told them that I had found the dog and that he was still alive. The poor couple were frantic with worry and had been going house to house all week looking for me. Of course I rang them straight away to let them know. Lamentably, in my haste, I had completely forgotten that I had asked Dad to bring the dog to the vets for disposal during the week, if he had the time. It dawned on me that there might be a horrible sit-com moment coming on, just as the poor man with the lump in his throat on the other end of the line asked where his little darling was now. “I’m sorry?….erm…your breaking up..erm…I’ll ring you back from outside…CLICK”.
One quick phone call to dad to establish that, thankfully, he had forgotten (Ah, that family trait comes in handy so many times), and I rang him back to tell him, rather tactfully I thought, to give me 20 minutes while I dug him up.
20 minutes of frantic digging then followed. Someone had moved the bloodly stick I had left to mark the grave and I was hurling soil over my shoulder in the dark muttering “where are you, ye little dead bastard?” in a manner that must have seem a tad disturbing from the top windows of my neighbours houses.
2 minutes to spare, I had him in a box, covered up with an old blanket, and I stood in the kitchen covered in mud, panting heavily. The doorbell rang and I went to meet the mourners.
I now know that I would never have made it as a Garda. When she asked me if i thought he had been knocked down , I answered “oh, yes, I’d say so”. She wailed, her husband shot me a glance that only real Gardai can do, and I changed my story to “oh, but I think he had a heart attack. Oh yes definetly a heart attack”. An approving nod from the husband and he’s mentally taken me off the list for car insurance checks over Christmas.
Just today I got a text from my friend who owns the pub. Apparently the owners have been speaking to her today, thanking her for her help in finding the dog, and have asked her if she would like a picture of the dog. A picture of the dog, dead, that is. I rang her back to see if I had understood her message correctly. Yes, we’ve been invited up to their house to have a drink with them as they take pictures of their dead dog. Oh, yes and what whiskey would I like as a present, along with a framed photo of the dog?. I told her I didn’t drink spirits, but that if I had to sit in a house while people photograph their stiff little pooch, I may well need something harder.