Moose in the Kitchen

Eel River has the kind of hot blue sky that you just don’t get in San Francisco, land of perpetual fog. I don’t have a picture. Eel River has a rock that looks like an owl perched on a ledge. No picture. To get to the swimming spot, you have to walk through an old railway tunnel under peril of crushing death. (Risk gasping out your last breath while thinking, “I should have gone to the Boardwalk,” to see the inside of an abandoned tunnel? TOTALLY WORTH IT.) And, yeah, still no picture. The tunnel was a cavernous arch of ancient wooden beams, the kind of beams you only get by using entire trees. There is much symbolism to be gleaned from walking through a (semi) dangerous tunnel and emerging into the light, but all I thought was, “Hey! Come back with those Doritos!” What can I say? I’m not that deep. Besides, we had the biggest bag of Doritos known to man and no, I can’t prove it, haven’t you been listening?

Why don’t I have any pictures? Because my camera was resting calmly in my desk drawer, as it always is when I find myself in an interesting situation. There are large sections of my life that are entirely undocumented, including the time I spent being 24, 25 and 26. As pictorial evidence is all I can count on, due to a brain that can’t remember a blasted thing unless it’s recorded on a post-it note, I am a barren wasteland of memory. And I don’t even smoke pot.

The day was momentous, and not just because I consumed a small goat’s worth of calories in Doritos. The dog swam for the first time. If this doesn’t sound so momentous, let me tell you, Meeka is not a water dog. She will enter the ocean for a tempting stick but the water never creeps higher than the tops of her legs. If the stick can only be reached by getting her shoulders wet, that stick could be made of wild gophers and plump kitties and she would let it float out to sea.

The dog doesn’t even get subjected to water for hygienic purposes. Before you put us at the top of your list of people from whom never to accept a dinner invitation, let me assure you that she doesn’t need it. Her coat is shiny and she smells like wild flowers. She’ll run up to people in the park and start nosing in their pockets for treats – she totally gets away with it because she’s so cute, her beauty will be her downfall – and they’ll fawn (as they should), “You’re so pretty! Did you just get a bath?”

Suckers! We never bathe her. She’s gotten a grand total of one bath in her life. I never admit this, because it makes me sound both lazy and smug. Which I am. But I don’t have to advertise it. Especially when the person commenting on her gorgeous, healthy coat has a mangy little pup who needs two baths a week to keep the house from smelling like an ogre’s den where the partially masticated remains of small mammals decorate the moldy carpet.

The dog got very distressed when we climbed in the water and showed no sign of getting out. When the boys swam off and disappeared for an hour, she spent the entire hour whimpering and pawing at the water. I tried to ease her distress and failed miserably – 45 minutes of whining later I was much less sympathetic. She didn’t relax until they reappeared, wet but otherwise unharmed.

Meeka didn’t crack until half an hour later when we all climbed back into the water and started paddling away. When she realized that we were actually going somewhere, she raced to the edge and began her pawing whimpering routine. We tried to reassure her from the river, but she doesn’t understand English. So she remained thoroughly unconvinced that the water wasn’t slowly digesting our legs and feasting happily on our innards. We kept swimming, guilty but not guilty enough to go back, and she kept whining.

Hearing a shout, I look over my shoulder to see Meeka paddling toward us with a look of determined terror on her furry face. She was clearly horrified that her entire body was submerged in the devil liquid, but more unwilling to endure the angst of not knowing if it was gnawing on our lifeless carcasses. We swam over to a sandbar, Meeka frantically following, so we could catch her and calm her down. It took five minutes of soothing before she stopped quivering, but then she paddled gamely after us.

She was obviously wondering if there was a concrete reason this was called the Eel River, but the whimpering had stopped. She clearly preferred to die with us than to be stranded helplessly on the bank. Totally unable to swim in a straight line, she meandered around in figure eights and was very relieved to find a large rock in the middle of the water to scramble up on. She had a few panicked moments when we dove down to swim through rock caves, but soon cottoned on to the idea that the water was not eating our flesh.

She probably won’t swim voluntarily any time soon, at least not without dire emergency or significant psychological distress, but a hurdle was leapt. Meeka braving the dreaded depths and swimming for the first time is the picture I really want. But I won’t need a post-it note to remember her fuzzy ears bobbing in the water as she paddled toward us.

Related posts:

1. Dogus Nervosa
2. Two Large Rumps, One Small Seat
3. I’m All Perky
4. Thirsty Work
5. Why I Have Doritos Crumbs in My Belly Button