Kirby really was a Vacuum Cleaner

I originally wrote this 25 years ago and am reposting on request.

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Today's story is about Eric, his wife, Tracy, and their beagle named Kirby.  Under normal circumstances a happy little family.  However, when it is 2 A.M. and the beagle wants to imitate Snoopy howling at the moon like when Linus is out in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Eric, Tracy, and the neighbors are a little less happy.

Our story begins with Tracy and Kirby in the back yard playing around.  The dog is very interested in the sparkling rock hanging on a thin gold chain around Tracy's neck.  This was a diamond Eric had given Tracy as a present just before they were married.  It represented Eric's last few dollars, and thus his true love for her, when he was still in his self-described "Ga-ga" stage of the relationship.

Like a true male he wasn't thinking about what he was doing.  If he had, he would have said to himself, "Self, once you are married, you will never have any money again, it all goes to your wife's wishes, be it a new couch, bedroom set, house, or *choke* baby shoes, you will be in debt the rest of your life.  You should spend this money on something of immense practical value that you will never be able to afford again, like a radio controlled model of the Titanic that you can crash into a floating block of ice, watch it sink, then you raise it and do it again.  Remember the ad in Playboy (also something you will never see again) last week?". But no, our hero spent it on his fiancée.

So back in the backyard, Kirby makes a flying leap at Tracy and catches the chain in his paw, breaking it.  Tracy is quite upset that this gift from the man she loves is broken.  She takes it inside and puts it on the desk for Eric to see.  This way she can point it out to Eric, and show how upset breaking his token of affection makes her.  Eric is supposed to heroically get the chain fixed and then present it to her, once again winning her heart and undying love.

Fortunately for our story, it didn't happen this way.

For those of you who don't know Eric, he can be quite a focused individual.  I've seen him sitting in front  of his computer with his head down, brows furrowed, looking like he's going to butt heads with the screen, while people threw stuff at him, or placed ornaments in his traditional Austrian hat he wears during implementations, just to see if they can distract him.  They always fail.  The only time I've been able to get his attention was when I hit him in the side of the head with a snowball.  (It was an accident...really).

Well somehow the importance of this item escaped Eric (he's been married a couple of years now, and has begun to settle in for the long haul).  Nobody is sure how it happened, but all fingers point to Eric absentmindedly knocking it off of the desk onto the floor.  I think he was looking at an interesting computer program and spread it out on the desk, after all, desk space to a programmer is far more valuable than a piece of crushed carbon.

At this point the diamond disappears.  They know it was on the desk, and now it's not.  A genuine horror engulfs them as they realize that their own living vacuum cleaner, Kirby, must have swallowed it whole.  At this point they are faced with a number of options:



A) Call the insurance company, and let them deal with it.

B) Cut the dog open and retrieve said diamond, or

C) You guessed it, wait and see what turns up.



Eric was partial to A, I suggested B (they hadn't even thought of this one), but this being Tracy's diamond and favorite dog, she opted for C.

Eric comes home the next day to find Tracy absolutely ecstatic.  She's found her diamond.  Whereupon she presents to him a baggie of doggie doo that she had retrieved from the back yard.  She had gone out back and searched through all of Kirby's, ummm, leftovers, and found her precious necklace.  Eric can just make out the glitter of gold in the bag through the tears of laughter.

Now, mind you, it is still not too late for Eric to call the insurance company, he can make a claim, get a new diamond, and then later tell the insurance company he found the necklace and give them the baggie to deal with.  Tracy will have none of that for her token of love.  She soaks the necklace in soapy water, and then in jewelry cleaner.  It now looks like new (but presumably is still broken), and no one will ever be the wiser.

But you all know dear readers.  So the next time you are at a party, and see a young lady walking toward you with a diamond on a thin gold chain, be kind and don't act like Dracula when he first meets the heroine and cringes at the sight of the cross around her neck.  All that glitters is not just gold.



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Postscript: I told this story to my cousin Beth who said she used to work in a dentist office and sometimes people’s gold crowns would come lose in their sleep and they would swallow them.  The dentist would say, “You know, if you retrieve the crown, we can clean it up, put it back, and you won’t have to pay for a new one”.

Which begs the question, what would you do?

The Legend of Jussie Smollett, Jr.

“Fucking dog!  Get out of the street you idiot!” 

It’s dark and there’s traffic coming.  Who’s going to see a small dog?

I can’t watch and hide my eyes as a white minivan comes through.

Vroom!

“Yip!”

I see the dog go down, I didn’t hide my eyes enough.

“Fuck!  Fuckity, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I throw up my arms in frustration.  I’m standing on the side of a major thoroughfare with cars rushing by at 50 miles an hour.  I walk away, I don’t want to look, nothing more I can do.  Well it’s not yelping, I’m the one who scared it into the street, I should at least check how bad it is and take it over to the vet to be put down if it’s still alive.

It was only two minutes earlier that I saw this small tan dog by itself as I drove into my complex after dark.  In the streetlight I can see she’s looking at me as I drive in.  I didn’t see any owners.  I saw a van parked about 100 yards up the street.  That’s unusual, there’s no parking on this road, maybe they’re the owners and were walking her, or maybe they just dumped her off.  I quickly park and get out to see what’s going on.

I walk out the gate and as I approach the dog I notice the van is gone and nobody’s around.  The dog is a Chihuahua.  I don’t like Chihuahuas, they’re nervous and bitey, so I’m nervous too.  I’m talking to her, trying to get her to come over to me but when I’m about four feet away, she starts barking at me and bolts into the street.

That’s when the white minivan comes by.

But when I turn around I’m surprised to see she’s still alive.  That won’t last long, there’s more traffic headed this way and she’s wandering around in the road, why doesn’t she cross the road to the median and get out of the way?  Stupid dog.  One thing I’m not going to do is wander out into traffic in the dark to save you.  I wave my hands from the side of the road, but I worry people will swerve away from me and hit her, so I stop.

She’s now in the left lane, some cars are dodging around her, but one doesn’t see her.

“Yip!”

Down she goes again.

Well that finished her off, I think.  But she’s up and stumbling around.  Finally a car stops in the left hand lane and the traffic stops too.  I go out into the street and try to force her on to the median.  She’s scared and barking at me whenever I get close.  The last thing I need is to get bit by a stray dog.

I notice she’s walking in circles, just like that cat did that got hit by a car a few years ago.  The cat was blinded by the hit and walking in circles to get its bearings.  I took the cat to the vet to be put down.  Now I gotta do that for this dog too?  I can see in the headlights that one eye is damaged.  Must have been the minivan.  This dog is not long for this world.

The guy gets out of his car and comes over to help.  All the traffic is still stopped, but impatient, as we try and corral this dog.  We’re like the Keystone Cops out there, chasing, and shooing.  Finally we get her up on the island and after about five minutes of high adrenaline excitement she’s worn down enough that the other guy can pick her up.

I instruct him to bring her over to my complex and get her out of the traffic.  He’s left his family in the car and other cars rush up from behind before cutting over to the right lane to avoid it.  He puts the dog down and I tell him to go get his car out of the way before his family is killed and he takes off.  He was very nice.

“Now what?”  I wonder, now that the immediate drama is over.

I obviously didn’t see any owners out there or they would have been having a heart attack and screaming.  I take a closer look.  Amazingly, she doesn’t look injured, but the dog is not just blind from the minivan, she’s missing both eyes!  WTF?  What are you doing out here girl?

She has a dog sweater that says ‘The world needs more naps’.  I can’t figure it out.  Is she a stray?  Did someone drop her off intentionally?  Where is she from?  Do the owners even know she’s gone?  Is she chipped?  Doubtful, who would chip a blind dog?

I call my friends who are involved with large animal rescue in Morgan Hill and they tell me to call the county animal control.  When I check on my phone, nothing is open until Monday and it’s late Friday night.  I’m going to have to keep this dog all weekend.  I’m actually a bit worried that if this dog isn’t chipped they’ll put her down, it’s hard to get a blind dog adopted.

I name the dog Jussie Smollett, Jr. because she’s caused quite a needless ruckus.  Plus, she can’t tell white people from black people either, can she?

I figure the best thing I can do is just to take her back to my place where I can examine her in the light.  Esmerelda, my feral cat, is none too pleased with this interloper.  She doesn’t seem to notice the dog in my arms and comes inside with me.  This should be interesting.

Jussie Smollet, Jr.

Esmerelda meets Jusse

I put Jussie down and Esmerelda starts mewling.  This attracts Jussie’s attention and she starts sniffing toward her.  Esmerelda’s small, but Jusse is smaller, she’s not giving ground.  Finally her nose touches Esmerelda’s and she cuffs her. 

“Yip!”, Jusse backs off.

“Nice try girl, but you can’t scratch her eyes out, it’s already been done”, I laugh.

Jussie’s not scared of the cat though and continues to sniff around.  I let Esmerelda out but she just sits on the porch mewling.  She never does that, she’s just jealous.  Tough luck cat.

Jussie seems quite at home in my place.  She’s not freaked out by anything.  She kind of follows me around, but she doesn’t walk into a single wall or piece of furniture.  How does she do that?  Is she detecting slight air currents?  She follows me everywhere and when I sit down she tries to jump up.  So I put her in my lap whenever I’m sitting.

I get a closer look at her eyes and realize the eyeballs have been removed and the skin professionally sewed shut around the sockets to prevent infection.  She looks in good shape, so I figure the owners must have wanted her if they went through all this expense and gave her a sweater.  She probably wandered over from the apartments nearby.

I figure I’ll give a once through those apartments this evening and worry about a better plan tomorrow.  The apartments are mostly empty.  I ask one guy about the owners and he refers me to where some people have some dogs, but I don’t see anyone and head back home.

I give Jusse some cat food and she scarfs it down.  But how will I get her water?  How is she going to smell water?  I put out a bowl of water and force her nose into it a bit.  She backs off.  But later on she seems to find the water.  How does she do that, does she detect humidity?

I want to go to bed so I figure she needs a walk before bedtime.  How do you walk a blind dog?  I don’t have a leash or collar either.  So I take her down to the grassy area, let her lose, and luckily she does her business.

Esmerelda is watching closely, she comes over and rubs up against one side of me while Jussie’s on the other.  So jealous; she refuses to come inside for the night.

For bedtime I put Jusse up on my bed, she gets under the covers and doesn’t move until morning. 

“Your owners are probably searching for you girl, but I’m exhausted, good night”.

I gotta say, I quickly came to like this amazing dog.  She’s not half as much trouble as I expected.  You’d barely notice she was blind.  She’s always looking right at you, ears perked. I took her for a walk in the morning and she followed me along the sidewalk no problem, she’s just slow as she’s always worried about running into something.  She didn’t bark, she didn’t snap, she wasn’t too demanding of affection but she did always want to be around me.  If I had nothing else to do in life, I’d adopt this dog.

By now I’ve formulated a plan, a blind Chihuahua must be a recognizable animal.  One of the vets nearby must know her, maybe they removed the eyes.  They can probably check for a chip too.  I figure I’ll print out a bunch of flyers and post them around those apartments.  I get about thirty made and I grab Jussie and we head out.

I figure since she’s blind she couldn’t have wandered far.  She must be from the neighboring apartment complex, because I’ve never seen her in our complex.  I see the maintenance guy at the far corner and I stop him by the dumpster.  He doesn’t recognize the dog.  That’s a bad sign, the maintenance guys know everything.

I ask him where I can put up posters, but he says it’s against policy.

Fucking policy.  Always ask for forgiveness, not permission.

A lady stops by and I can tell they’re talking about the dog in Spanish.  She tells me she has a Chihuahua and asks if she can take care of Jussie.  

Are you kidding?  You’re offering to take this blind dog off of my hands?  Of course!  Plus, it will be easier to find the owner if you walk the dog outside a couple of times a day in the complex.  She loves dogs and is quite happy to take Jussie.

She tells me there’s a couple who have two Chihuahuas at the end of the complex.  We go over to her apartment so I can get her address and information so I can contact her if somebody calls about my poster when we see this guy walking towards us with a Chihuahua.

“Please let this be the two Chihuahua guy missing one”, I pray.  After all, what are the odds?

He spies us and makes his way over, sure enough it turns out he is missing a blind Chihuahua!  He explains his wife has been worried sick and they were searching for the dog until 2 A.M.  It turns out that it is chipped and the dog had glaucoma and had it’s eyes removed a few months ago.  His wife loves that dog.

His wife is ecstatic to see the dog and they tell the stories of all their searching up and down the street until 2 A.M.  She says the dog has gotten more adventurous lately and went left instead of right as she normally does when out.  I point out she’s got a slightly injured leg from one of the cars, but it doesn’t look like anything’s broken.  We talk a while and thank each other and go on with our lives.

I’ll miss you Jussie, you are a great dog, I take back a third of what I’ve ever said about Chihuahuas.  By the way I never did get your real name, you’ll always be Jussie to me. 

And Jussie, you are one fucking, fucking, fucking, lucky dog.