…sayeth Paris, and it apparently intends to repay.
Two things:
1) There’s this crazed pointer that lives on the ground floor of the building across from us. And while her owners are apparently aware enough of her problem to tack up a giant flowered bedsheet over their windows, her needs regularly trump their precautions. From what I can tell, she “stands” up against the wall, shoves her nose up under a corner of the sheet, and patrols the sidewalk. So I’ll be walking by with Jolie, when suddenly a loud baying begins right, like, on my shoulder, and I jump out of my skin. And then I’ll turn to look, because the adorable glimpse of pointer noise is all that I will get in return for the years that she’s scared off my life:
Anyway, today the mammoth Bernese Mountain dog that the guy a few blocks away walks without a leash just to freak people out:
(that’s not him; just a look-alike borrowed from www.bernesemountaindogpuppies.ca) happened to walk by.
And the pointer started with the crazy.
And the Bernese gave every indication of trying to jump in through the closed window in his eagerness to say hello, and if you’ve ever seen one of those things, you’ll understand why I was surprised that the window held.
I was not surprised when the pointer got very, very quiet and backed away from the window. In fact, I laughed out loud, and now even more Parisians think that I’m a little…off.
2) It’s not like I think that I’ll be immune from the recent wave of karma, of course. My trouble, naturally, began with Jolie: I kind…well, you could say that I kind of let her hunt ducks.
I tried to call her away from the adorable mallard pair on the outbound trip; there was a woman standing near them and staring off over the river and obviously having a serene moment, and she looked kind of depressed when Jolie chased her ducks away. They were on the other side of the fence, see, and Jolie had more or less passed them without comment, so I was already thinking of something else when she backtracked, ears flying, to proudly scare them off.
“It’s okay,” the woman said morosely. “They settled again right down there.” But then she left, and I felt guilty.
The upshot of her having left, though, is that she was no longer there to provoke my guilt when we returned along the same path, and saw the mallards being all adorable in their new spot. Did I mention that there was still a fence between us when I whispered to Jolie that I had a present for her? She just likes chasing things so very much, and I thought that she might like a change from her usual fare of pigeons and ravens.
But…okay. Call me crazy, but doesn’t it look like it’s at least a little possible that the birds have banded together and are plotting something??
