Busy Day

Hello. This is The Daily Bone, and I’m your doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel, chairman of the Squeaky Party.

Yesterday was a busy day for me and my stalwart associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel. It started with a car trip (yes, we shivered and cowered the whole way) to the vet to see Miss Jacquie for our routine bath and buzz cut. In addition to that Joey dog needed his ears checked by the vet. Oh, and I lost two pounds since the last time I was there. Well, we survived, and I must say, we’re looking a lot more dapper and streamlined now. Thanks Miss Jacquie!

But upon returning home, there was little time to rest. I was immediately recruited to try to convince the crazy red cardinal to stop bashing himself against our windows before he hurts himself. I decided a barking campaign would be the appropriate deterrent, even though I have been taught not to bark at the nice birdies. I’ll let you know if it was successful.

Hello! Anybody home? Let me in! Let me in!

Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark!

Meanwhile, our humans left to make a trip to the planet where our favorite small human lives. Joey dog and I took a well deserved nap whilst eagerly awaiting a squeaky toy report and photographs from Ryan’s high tech world. We were not disappointed. Apparently he has yet another new intergalactic space pod especially designed for his sitting comfort while eating yum yum baby food. Check out the futuristic safety belts. The food he ate comes in special plastic containers, just like the astronauts eat. What did he have for dinner, you might ask? Why pears of course! Joey dog says he would be glad to clean those containers when Ryan is done with them.

Greetings again, Earthdoggies.

Then Ryan demonstrated his new control panel from which he navigates the universe, checks his squeaky toy inventory, and generates secret musical, squeaky communication codes. Wow! Maybe I can get one of those and send messages back to him. Or maybe, I might be tempted to actually jump in the car and make the perilous journey to his home planet just to see all his wonderful squeaky toys! Hopefully he’ll come visit us soon so we doggies can help him with his four legged locomotion techniques that we heard he was attempting. There are some epic dust bunnies under the couch he might be interested in exploring.

Too tired to say more now. Good night.

Snoooooooooork

Disaster Has Arrived

Hello and welcome all fellow Americans! This is The Daily Bone, and I’m your faithful doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel. Hang onto your squeaky toys, because today we’re reporting on the government shut down.

Oh no! The US Government has shut down! There will be rioting in the streets and armies of zombies will be running rampant just like all those end of the world (again) block buster movies from this summer. The media is creating a frenzy of blame and vilification, and are doing cartwheels of joy. Wow! A big news story to make money for them! I am reminded of an old cartoon in which Bugs Bunny is stuck in a big pot over a fire with jungle head hunters dancing all around it. Good grief! Come on people! Can’t you sit down and talk together and solve your differences like adults? 

Meanwhile the war of the birds has begun. Look at this red cardinal sitting outside our window. He has been attacking the window and chirping angrily all morning. Who needs the Angry Birds video game? Earlier, squadrons of loudly trumpeting geese swooped through the skies awakening everybody in the house at the crack of dawn. There have been reports of gigantic flocks of starlings sitting on the telephone wires bombarding cars with purple poop. Yikes!

Cheep cheep cheep cheep!

Whomp!

Well, since the government is shut down, my patriotic colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I are going on furlough for a while. We’re going to take a nice long nap and gather our energy for the Revenge of the Birds. Oh, and contemplate the plan for the Squeaky Party to take over before the Diabolical Debt Ceiling Crisis hits. And that’s a memo.

Let's Have a Crisis!

Hello everybody! This is The Daily Bone and I’m your fabulous doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.

Today we’re going to play a game called Let’s Have a Crisis! Hooray! We have a whole barrage of terrible, horrible, very bad things going on. Our first contestant gets to choose between defunding Obama-Care and shutting down the entire government. The prize is a tax hike no matter what happens. I couldn’t find anybody who wanted to play, so I went out in the back yard and caught a mousie. It took me an hour to track him down, and I dug up a whole bunch of plants in the process. Finally I caught him and gave him a good shake that sent him flying into the mulch by the side of the house. My humans finally captured him in the bottom of the compost bucket. But here he is ladies and gentlemen, in the photo below. Look how excited he is to be in our most apocalyptic show ever! You should hear him squeak! Well, back to the game, in order to help him decide which choice is the right one, we had him listen to endless hours of political analysis on TV. Wasn't that fun?

Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak!

To make this deal even better, we’re adding two more crisis situations that are sure to bring about the end of the world (again) namely the Debt Ceiling and the Bailout for Detroit. Wow! What a line-up! Mr. Mousie is squeaking even louder now. Just imagine how wonderful it will be when our government plunges us into even more in debt than ever before! And you, Mr. Mousie, will have the honor of paying for it all!

OK, seriously. If you’ve been watching the news lately, it seems like this is all a big game show. You would certainly feel like the world is coming to an end (again) and life as we know it will be over. Mr. Mousie wasn’t very happy about being involved in any of this, and we let him go in the front yard. I was in big trouble for digging up the garden and getting all dirty. I later found out that Mr. Mousie was, in fact, a shrew, and I probably should have left him alone so he can go on eating the slugs that are ruining the hostas. As far as all those politicians arguing about how to spend more and more our hard-earned tax money, I am very tempted to send them all to a time-out until they can think of a way to compromise for what’s best for all of our citizens using the least amount of tax money, rather than what’s best for their next election campaign. We’re all sick and tired of this endless crisis. And that’s a memo.

Squirrel-abuster

Good morning humans and doggies! This is a special morning edition of The Daily Bone, and I'm your energetic doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.

bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark
bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark

Wow! You know how much I like filibusters. It means someone can stand up and talk about something for as long as he wants and everybody else has to listen. There is a politician guy who is doing just that right now. He’s been going for over twenty hours and counting. He is against the Affordable Care Act and is reciting all the problems with it. I’m not sure what green eggs and ham have to do with it, but he mentioned them too. Sounds yummy to me, and since I’m color blind, I don’t care what color the food is. And I imagine that after talking for so long, he doesn’t care either. He even mentioned—and you can look up what he said if you don't believe me—that a camel hair brush is made out of squirrel fur! Bwahahahahaha! Why would a camel brush its hair with a squirrel anyway? Seriously, you can't even make this stuff up!

I have been carrying out my own filibuster against the Evil Squirrel Cartel, despite the fact that my colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel has criticized me for barking up the wrong tree. Since the pears are now gone, the squirrels have been raiding the bird feeders with renewed determination, even though there are plenty of acorns and crab apples in the neighborhood for them. Somebody has to stand up for the little birdies. They need their seeds because they have to get fat so they can survive the winter. I made a promise to them: if you like your bird seeds, you can keep your bird seeds. If you like your bird feeder, your can keep your bird feeder. And if you like your humans who provide the bird seeds, you can keep them too. I intend to keep my promises. Soooooo, I will continue my efforts to keep those nasty seed-stealing bushy-tailed criminals stuck up in the big silver maple tree, and all the other trees in my yard for that matter, where they aren’t bothering the birdies, even if I have to stay outside and bark all day! 

bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark
bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark

bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark
bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark

Duck, Duck, Goose

What the duck?

Good evening. This is The Daily Bone and I’m your humble doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel, chairman of the Squeaky Party. We believe squeaky toys will make the world a better place.

I have been trying to figure out what a Duck Dynasty is. I’m not very familiar with ducks. Occasionally they fly through our sovereign air space, although nowhere near as often as the gigantic flocks of geese do. Every Spring we get a lone duck waddling around in the green belt territory next to our yard. But upon discovering there are no permanent ponds there, it leaves and doesn’t return until next year at the same time. Geese, on the other hand, stick around. You might call them Occupy Mall Street, because they seem to favor catch ponds and ditches around shopping plazas. The only time they ever leave is when the ponds completely freeze over. In the meantime, they block traffic, and leave mushy green blobs of poop on every sidewalk and parking lot. Sometimes they infuriate farmers by eating fields of beans and leafy green crops. Every Fall, they fly in around in huge groups making a lot of loud honking noises that can be heard at all hours of the day and night. Their tight v-formation flight patterns suggest that perhaps there is some kind of military training going on.

I contacted Professor Braydie Spiker to see if she knew anything about ducks around her home on Planet Florida. Although she was busy catching unidentified flying objects in her secret laboratory, she took the time to answer my questions. She said there are special exotic weirdo ducks that live in the mall parking lots there, and it’s illegal to harm any of them. I wondered what happened if an alligator climbed out of a canal and ate them. Would he get arrested too? Braydie didn’t know the answer to that, but she warned me that I should never leave my car in the alligator’s parking space, or else I’ll end up walking home. They also have vultures that pick the plastic off your vehicles, giant egret and heron sentinels watching over all the waterways, toothy snakehead fish that sometimes walk around on the land, seventeen foot pythons who would gladly eat doggies for dinner, panhandlers who try to get money from you when you’re stuck at a stop light, and battalions of tiny lizards that don’t hesitate to jump onto your face when you least expect it. Given all that, ducks and geese are not a big problem. Florida must be a strange and dangerous planet indeed! Oh, but then Professor Braydie had to excuse herself because during our conversation, another paranormal balloon attack had occurred that she had to analyze immediately. 

I want to believe.

Well, getting back to my main subject, I thought about the word, dynasty. That usually designates a ruling family of some kind, especially when talking about China, and the Far East. That brings to mind movies about vast imperial armies who go around burning villages and executing the people there. Maybe that’s what a duck dynasty is! Perhaps the lone duck that shows up every Spring is a spy  investigating the local Goose Empire, in preparation for an invasion, and—

Oh … My humans turned on the television and started watching Duck Dynasty. To my amazement, it had hardly anything to do with either ducks or evil despotic rulers, but rather a bunch of bearded guys getting into mischief. Occasionally they stopped to whittle a new duck call device. By selling those duck call things, they had made millions of dollars, so that now they can do anything they want all day. AND they get paid to be on TV doing whatever they want. So I guess I don’t have to worry about ducks and geese fighting it out in the fields and skies of our beloved homeland. Wow, that’s a relief! 

Don't look now Chester, but … um … I think that's a duck. 

We're doomed.

To be continued …

Unintended Consequences

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and doggies. This is The Daily Bone, and I’m your humble doggie host Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel sitting in for Chester L. W. Spaniel. You will find out why in a minute.

Hehehehehe.

As we reported last week, the humans have cut down a big branch from the silver maple tree in our back yard. This branch was a major escape route for members of the Evil Squirrel Cartel. We also finally harvested the last of the delicious yum yum pears from the pear tree. So now the squirrels have nothing much to steal except for bird seeds from the feeders. You might think all is well in the world now, and we doggies can take a much needed break from chasing those bushy-tailed miscreants. However, they still haven’t gotten it through their nutty little heads that there are no more pears to steal, and keep invading our territory anyway, searching for the fruit. Then we doggies run out and chase them. They flee straight up the big maple tree, only to discover that their superhighway out of town has been removed, and they are now trapped. That’s good enough for me, and I go back indoors for my doggie treat reward. But Chester doesn’t give up. He stays outside and keeps barking up at those demented squirrels stuck in the tree, sometimes for hours, even in the rain and mud. Our humans have to go out and bring him inside with a leash. What a dumdum! I’m sure the humans didn’t think of this consequence of their actions either! 

Barking up the wrong tree.

Mission Accomplished

Hi everybody! This is The Daily Bone, and I am your loyal and vigilant doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel, chairman of the Squeaky Party, along with my dedicated and hard-working colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel, founder of the Yum Yum Coalition.

Yum.

Fall is a great time of year! The weather is fine and sunny, the flowers are blooming, and best of all, the pears are ripe. Today our humans picked the last remaining pears from the tree which Joey dog and I have been guarding all summer. It's been a lot of work keeping the Evil Squirrel Cartel from stealing them. Because of our diligent efforts, our humans were able to collect almost two bushels of delicious, yum yum pears, not including the ones we doggies picked ourselves for our own consumption every day for the last month. This wonderful harvest was distributed to all our neighbors and coworkers who enjoyed them very  much. One neighbor gave us a big piece of pear pie she had made, and it was heavenly. Thank you so much!  

Here we are in the photos below, hard at work carrying out one of our many surveillance missions in the hot summer sun, sniffing for squirrel tracks. This job was not without its hazards. There have been many times a pear fell out of the tree and hit us on the head. Perhaps we should have been wearing safety helmets. However, we were uninjured because, according to our humans, we are a couple of boneheads anyway.

 

 

If you are some of the few people who actually like squirrels, don't worry. There are also plenty of pears in the compost pile that they may have. These were the ones that were too small or funny shaped, but they still taste good. I'm sure the chipmunks, mousies and bunnies will avail themselves of this treat as well. After a snack (of pears, of course) and a drink of water, we doggies are going to lie down in the nice soft grass under the pear tree and enjoy listening to the wind rustling through the leaves, confident we won't be pelted by any more falling fruit. Life is good.