Daisy has just gone through her first Halloween / Guy Fawkes Night combo, and she’s coped rather well. I made a point of playing recordings of firework displays when she was very young which may have helped; we’ve also been having thick low cloud cover for the last week or so and that has both damped the sound and visuals from distant fireworks. Perhaps the biggest factor that’s helped Daisy cope though, is Monkey’s completely chilled attitude to it all; a big volley of whizz-bangs kicked off while he was having a pee in the garden and he just carried on as though nothing was happening.
For much of his early years Biggles was similarly bombproof, but later on Beanie’s growing fears convinced him that maybe there was something to worry about after all; it’s definitely a good thing to keep the whole team feeling calm during this annual gauntlet.
Of course there are other things that can get Beagle pulses racing at this time of year. On their Halloween teatime walk we rounded a corner and nearly bumped into two Tyrannosauri Reges (I think that’s the plural form). They were a bit shorter than the ones in the Jurassic Park movies – only around 6ft tall – and they made squeaking sounds as they walked because various bits of them seemed to be made of inflatable vinyl. Daisy also made squeaky noises as she passed them, even though she has no inflatable components. Monkey didn’t squeak but after taking a second or two to process what he was seeing, he did release a couple of wooflets. Wooflets are what comes out of Monkeys when a full howl is not required, but a bit of pressure must nevertheless be released; sort of a woof version of hiccups. The Tyrannosaurs didn’t react to the squeaks or wooflets, so nothing further came of the encounter.
There may not have been any legit scares over the last week, but there were still moments of horror. One of them happened during a particularly heavy poo drop from the Monkster. Just as he squatted, Daisy felt the need to tangle the leads, putting her lead right in the path of the falling poo bombs. I had one of those slow motion Jean Claude Van Damme “Noooooooooo!” moments as I tried to get Daisy’s lead out of the drop zone, but to no avail. I had no gloves, and no means of wiping the worst of the soiling off Daisy’s lead, so I just had to get poop on my hands until I could get the two of them home and spend some quality time at our outdoor tap with soap and a pair of old towels. Why is it that you’re absolutely guaranteed to have an itchy nose when you’ve got Monkey-poo smeared all over your fingers?
I don’t know what those are Monkey, but I they’re not Tyrannosaurs because they aren’t squeaking as they walk.
Whizz bangs are going off but Monkey’s only interested in that bag of peanuts Mum’s just opened.
Halloween & Guy Fawkes: not a big deal if you’re a Daisy. Let’s hope it stays that way.