My friends Joe and Lily moved from
Pennsylvania to Texas in 1980. Joe was a sergeant with the highway patrol,
a city boy that loved fresh air and was an avid quail hunter. Lily
gardened and home-schooled their kids, dreaming of the country life she
left years before. Both were finding the big city life harder to take once
the kids had left the nest, and Joe had been shot at one time too many.
He got a good job offer with the sheriff’s office in our county, and I was
thrilled to find we would be neighbors again.
Before moving
south that spring, they decided to take a financial leap and invest in a
business to carry them through to retirement. There just happened to be a
nice little bed-and-breakfast-style motel available in our burg that
caught their fancy. It was a cute homey place with a wide sweeping lawn
and flower beds that just ached for renovation. The crown jewel of
the place was a beautifully tiled swimming pool directly in front of their
apartment.
Joe was understandably
nervous about the pool, as it was so popular, but needed expensive
insurance and loads of upkeep. Fortunately they had hired Jose, a good
handyman who knew all about pools, and they left its care in his capable
hands.
Joe had a pair
of athletic Weimaraners that Lily had given him for Christmas several
years before. They were just as excited as he was by the abundant
wildlife. Every morning before Joe left for work, he would let the dogs
out by the pool to do their -ahem - duty, and Lily followed, as soon as her
chores were finished, to shepherd the dogs back to the house and
pooper-scoop after them.
Weimaraners are
a fairly large breed of dog, and like similar-sized dogs they have a
tendency to leave large-sized piles in their wake. Since the swimming pool
was so popular, and Jose didn’t particularly care for dogs, Lily had to be
prompt with the cleanup so he, and their lodgers, didn’t encounter any
landmines.
On occasion she would be delayed and by the time that she could
attend to the mess, it was usually gone. Since Jose didn’t speak much
English, and Lily didn’t speak much Spanish, she hadn’t found a way to
properly thank him for what she considered "service above and beyond the
call of duty." Each payday she made sure that Jose had a nice tip as a
thank you.
About four months
after they moved in, Jose fell off a ladder while hanging lights for
Fiesta. Joe took the night-shift and started helping Lily more
around the motel during the day. It had been a rainy spring and
small toads kept falling in the otherwise perfect pool, and had to be
fished out every morning. While he played around at being the
handyman, Joe would let the dogs accompany him. On weekends, he’d be
so busy talking with tenants and cleaning the pool that he’d lose track of
the hours. The abundant wildlife and insects were much more
interesting than work. About the time he’d be ready with the
pooper-scooper, the dog’s mess would be gone.
Naturally, Joe
thought that his adoring wife had slipped out unseen and cleaned up after
his dogs each time, so he thanked her. After a couple of times being
commended without explanation, Lily demanded to know what he was thanking
her for. No, she didn’t clean up after the dogs. Neither did
he. Having a naturally suspicious attitude after his urban patrols,
Joe kept the dogs corralled and called me, his closest neighbor. No,
I hadn’t spirited the stuff away. I had plenty of my own. No,
I hadn’t seen Jose at it: he could barely hobble around.
Joe asked me
over to scope out the area and see if I could solve the dilemma of the
missing piles. It was his professional opinion that we had some sort of
pervert running around absconding with dog feces. Lordy, it was hard not
to laugh. He was serious. I wasn’t about to tell him…nor was Jose.
The next morning
after the dogs were brought in, Joe and Lily started a stake-out over the
piles. They closed the curtains and kept an eye out through the
cracks for the guilty party. No one showed. Puzzled, they
searched the grass…missing…the stuff just didn’t sprout legs and walk off
on it’s own! Eight days they watched for pile-pilferers without
catching anyone. They even had others come by to help. Then,
on the ninth day, Joe called me. “Come over here!” he excitedly
shouted through the phone. “You won’t believe this!” When I
got there, both of them were staring intently at a landmine.
Yessir, Joe had
discovered dung beetles.
