The background of this photo that shows my once really nice backyard has me reminiscing a bit. My wonderful, private fence no longer looks like that. I'm afraid if archaeologists every examine my yard, they will wonder what fierce creature I kept in bondage. Uh... that would be Mabel.
Between my only neighbor feeding every stray cat in the area and living on a canal with an ample supply of critters, Mabel stays fairly busy on patrol.
When she first arrived, at four months old, and became aware of the racoons and possums and such, they terrified her. I had never heard the jump rope song "Mabel, Mabel Set the Table," when I came up with the first Mabel Lou song. (I often make up songs with my new dog's names in it to help them learn their name in a fun way. Since I always get shelter dogs, I've found they associate their name with something bad. The song is my way of changing that.) It started like this: Mabel, Mabel sleeps on my table... The poor pup was so scared of the critters, she would sleep on top of a glass table on the patio. I was really worried what would happen to her as her weight increased!
But after a month or so she started growing into the tough girl she is now. One afternoon, we both heard some critter under the deck. Mabel took off and made it to the back steps, stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. Her expression seemed to ask, "You comin'?"
"No, that's your job," I replied.
Off she went. And never looked back. If only I would have known how seriously she would take that job!
The other day, I was in the office. The windows were open on a warm afternoon. I heard Mabel on the back deck making a horrendous noise. As it intensified and suddenly sounded like she were chewing something, I took off to see what was wrong.
From the patio, I could see she was eating the deck! I yelled. Of course she didn't stop. (When will I ever learn?) So, I grabbed the camera and filmed the destruction. Here she is in all her glory.
After that, not believing anything was really under there, I went into the kitchen to make some lunch. When the noise changed again, I went out to inspect the damages. Here's what I found.
The apology you hear at the end of the video is to the possum. After that, I grabbed Miss Mabel and took her in the house until the possum left. To think I stuck my hand in there! And now my deck looks even more "lived in."
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