A Tail of Two Dinners

You think I spelled "tail" incorrectly, don't you? No, I didn't. Because I don't exactly mean "tale" as in a story. I mean "tail" as in the thing that sticks off the south end of a north bound dog. Yes, that's right, I said dog. This is a dog story.

So Husband and I were eating dinner the other night when HLB came by. He stopped by to help us out with our whole mailbox issue (which is another story for another time), so Husband and I both got up and went outside for our free mailbox consultation. As I left the kitchen, I stopped and went back. I pushed the semi-eaten plates of food to the center of the table, pushed the chairs up under the table, and grabbed the rest of my BBQ sandwich for good measure. That left mine and Husband's plates lying naked and unprotected on the kitchen table. I thought "Ahh, they won't bother it." My biggest mistake, I think, was not only in trusting the little white innocent looking dogs, but in not noticing exactly how much food Husband had left.

You see, I thought he'd finished eating. So when I came back in later and found his plate empty, I didn't think anything about it. Until he, while washing his hands of mailbox dust, exclaimed, "What happened to my food?!" Quite innocently I asked, "What food? I thought you were done." He proceeds to describe, in great detail at a loud volume, what exactly was left on his plate...1/4 of his BBQ sandwich, a decent amount of (cold and not-so-great) baked beans, and quite a bit of his most favorite potato salad in the entire world. No longer. It was gone. But my food remained. All of it. I knew exactly how much food I had when I left, and that's what I still had. I started laughing. And I couldn't stop.

And that, of course, irritated Husband. He found no humor in the situation. His beloved potato salad had been eaten, nay, licked from his very plate in his own kitchen. And my plate which sat literally touching his, hadn't been touched. His food had been consumed and mine had been spared. It was like the Passover or something. Again, I couldn't stop laughing. I followed him around the house as he pouted over his sacrificed food, laughing. I realize that was a little childish and immature, but in the moment it was the thing to do.

So I decided to investigate. At first glance, I really couldn't tell if any of the chairs had been moved or not, but upon further inspection I noticed that one was moved ever so slightly. It could only be one dog. The cute one. The little one. The naughty one. So I picked Criket up and strangely enough, even though she didn't eat her dinner, she was fat as a tick. I guess beans will do that to you, especially when you're not used to eating them. And when I got close to her, I noticed a bit of bean juice still stuck in her scruff around her mouth. Yep, she had baked bean breath.

So I guess the moral of the story is to not trust my cute, evil little dog around food...or maybe next time sacrifice something so your plate is spared.