Mud

When I try to explain to the uninitiated that Mo is a flight risk, people generally laugh. It's not funny, though:



Mo took off her crocks and was delighting in a manifestation of my driveway drainage issue.

Then she discovered the mud around the neighbor's house, where they dug it up to do foundation work.



She'd knead the mud with her feet, then go splash in the driveway, then go back to the mud.

I talked to a neighbor for a few minutes, met Ivan the impossibly big friendly dog, and watched Mo go back and forth between the two delights.

She'd occasionally work a variation like ringing the doorbell to make Barley bark his fool head off before switching from the puddle to the mud, but basically she was content to go back and forth between these two sensations for a half hour or so.

Content? Maybe not. She was waiting for me to let down my guard.

I thought she went back in the house, which was fine, but I needed to break off the conversation and get inside before Mo got into stuff.

Maybe five minutes pass, and I go in prepared to catch her opening a bottle of solvent or taking a knife to her stuffed animals, and she's not in the house.

I do a frantic room-to-room because she doesn't necessarily answer when called, but no Mo.



I run back outside, and I'm calling her, and I look and she's over in the subdivision they're building behind our house, enjoying herself tremendously. Bigger puddles, much more mud.



She came back when I called to her, as if nothing was wrong.