5:34am—Realize the alarm is going off.
5:45am—Drag self out of bed with great difficulty and a surprising amount of determination.
5:55am—Down a cup of strong coffee. Plug loud music into my dull mind.
6:00am—Throw hair in ponytail and place fuzzy headband thing on my head. Forget the makeup. Head for car.
6:05am—Ready for work, in car, heading down driveway.
See! I do have a routine, and I stick to it meticulously. My exactness of time is purely involuntary. At five thirty in the morning, my mind follows my body, not the other way around. For almost three weeks I have survived the early mornings, and without anymore difficulty than you would expect a teenager to have getting up before nine. I enjoy my job. It’s what makes me happy, most days.
My routine isn’t the only thing that never varies. For the last few weeks everything has been the same on the way down to the stables where I work. The journey is relatively short; the road winds and curves unpredictably; there are only three houses with lights on; and I go through two valleys that are notorious for being inhabited with animals that are highly unwanted in the grill of your car, especially in the grill of mine. At dawn, these animals, such as deer, opposums, raccoons, and the occasional squirrel or coyote, are especially bad about running into or in front of passing cars. Only yesterday, my mother almost hit a dozen deer, who were just standing in the middle of the road, hanging out. She was obviously the one who was intruding upon their territory.
Despite these animals unmistakable presence, I have never hit one nor have I ever come close… until this morning.
I was driving along, going less than 45 mph down one of the two curvy hills. I am not usually a Driving Ms. Daisy at all, but when I saw those beady little eyes peaking out from behind the yellow sideline of the road, I instinctively tapped the brakes, but continued on the beaten path. I was merely hoping that the unidentified animal would stay put for another two seconds, and I would be out of its way. But that would be too convenient. Out the critter dodged, and from the light of my brights, I identified those beady little eyes as being a raccoon’s. Thump, clump, thump. Silence. Oops.
For the next half a mile or so I had a pit in my stomach thinking that I had killed something, a living thing. I didn’t know I was capable of murder! It was highly depressing until I realized that it was, after all, just a stupid raccoon. I hate raccoons! I have sworn since I was in third grade that there was a whole pack of rabid raccoons living in the hayloft of the abandoned barn at my house. If I had eliminated one of those critters, ba-bye!
Okay, so I’m not that heartless, but by the time I pulled into the driveway of the stables, the issue was no longer on the forefront of my mind.
After running over a raccoon, I thought I was completely awake. As it turns out, I was only 50% awake. The other 50% of my mind became active after my barn manager said, “Have you seen Frank?” Frank is a small black and white female Border Collie, who is older and has a tendency to run off without Sue, the lively male Border Collie.”
“No,” I answered, unalarmed but curious.
Before I could ask a further question, the barn manager filled me in. “She ran down the driveway in the dark, and the last time I saw her, she was headed for the highway.”
You mean the highway I just came from??? Ummm…..
“No, I haven’t seen her,” I said without flinching, but inside I felt like I had swallowed a quart of butterflies. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that it might not have killed a raccoon after all. “I might be a dog murderer,” I thought and couldn’t keep quiet. “Does she kind of look like a raccoon in the dark?” I asked probably more quietly than I should have.
The barn manager looked surprised and said, “Yeah! I’ve almost missed her a couple of times in the woods because she looked so much like a raccoon.” That was the worst possible thing she could have said until she continued, “It was definitely her if she was up on the highway. There aren’t any raccoons up there because the coyotes are so thick this year.”
At that moment I wanted more than anything to disintegrate into thin air. But rather than come clean and send the barn manager into a panic over the death of her “babydog,” I kept quiet. Maybe I hadn’t killed her; maybe I just knocked her over. But such rational conclusions were quickly replaced by thoughts such as, OMG! I killed a “she” instead of an “it!”
I could not stop thinking about how this sweet, old, innocent dog that I had petted less than twenty-four hours ago was dead, and I was the cause. Her epitaph would read:
Frankie Lynn
The best dog a barn could have until SHE ran over her.
Died February 16, 2011.
With this and several other morbid notions running through my mind, I decided not to say anything about seeing the dumb dog, thinking that it would be the path of least resistance.
More than an hour later, I was well on my way to being done with chores. I must admit that I had the music on my iPod turned up just a little too loud, and the sounds of the outside world were tuned out, but my sixth sense was far from eliminated, and I trusted it to tell me should someone have needed me.
Side note: I am terrible with latches on gates. They are horrible creation if you ask me. Somebody should invent latches that are magnetic.
It was while I was fiddling around with a stupid latch that I sensed a presence. I looked up and around. There was nobody in front of me. I turned around. Sitting directly, and I mean directly, behind me was Frank, the dead dog! Except she wasn’t dead! Her ears were perked up and before I could even find the words to commend her or congratulate her for being alive, she was off in the direction of the barn where she knew I would be heading to retrieve another horse. As she ran she would look back to make sure that I was well in tow.
And here I was thinking I was going to have to check murder off my “List of Nevers.”
Dumb dog!
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