And The Score is; Dog-3/ Roommate-0

                                         By Dave Hamby

              I just got off the phone with my ol’ best bud and roommate Randy.   We were having our bi-annual “keep in touch” phone call and I was telling him how I’m writing a humor column now.  “You’re not going to write about me and that dang dog, are you?” he asked with a note of real concern in his voice.  Gosh, I‘d completely forgotten about that contest of wills.

              This story happened a long, long time ago. Back when I had a full head of hair, only one chin, and my waist size was larger than the girth of my gut. That is to say there wasn’t anything hanging over the belt.  Everybody wore bell-bottomed pants and all the guys had pork-chop sideburns, bushy mustaches, and long hair that hung over really big shirt collars.  

              Between the two of us we were having the complete college experience.   Randy went to classes, studied, and filled his head with useless information. I drank beer, went to football games, and filled my head with useful information, like coed’s phone numbers, football statistics, and who’s having what party, where.  We shared one half of a duplex Randy’s father bought in Austin.  In exchange for collecting rent from me and the other tenants and keeping up the property, he got to live there rent free.

              That’s why it became such a big issue for Randy when our neighbor’s dog, a Great Dane, started using our front yard as a toilet. It’s bad enough to have dog poop scattered around your yard, but this was a really big dog and he left some really big souvenirs.  This dog also had some kind of weird psychic ability.  He was able to predict exactly where Randy was going to step and left a little surprise in that exact spot for him. Actually it was more like a big surprise.

             Now Randy complained long and loud, but he wasn’t going to do anything until two specific incidents brought the issue to a head. The first was when the dog pooped on top of one of our boxwood hedges and killed the bush.  I know it’s hard to imagine a dog big enough to accomplish this, considering dogs squat down real low to the ground when they poop, but the dead box-wood was there as proof.

              The second incident was when the dog marked his territory on Randy’s little MG.  It’s insulting enough to have a dog spray your wheel, but this dog was so big and Randy’s car was so little that he got the entire car.  Not only that, Randy had the top down and the interior got soaked

              “Where do we keep the rock salt?” Randy asked me the next morning over coffee.  “I’m gonna blast that dog right in his butt and show him that he’s not welcome here anymore.”  I told him that we didn’t have any rock salt. “Do we have anything that’s like rock salt?” he asked.  I showed him the Taster’s Choice freeze dried coffee and asked if he thought that would work. Just then Randy spotted the culprit in our front yard and snatched the coffee jar right out of my hand.

              Now Randy's one of these “black powder” gun nuts and he kept a replica of a .50 caliber elephant gun on a rack over the fireplace.  This rifle was over 6 foot long and had a bore that was about the size of an exhaust pipe on a foreign car. Once I went with him to the firing range and when he fired that thing it made such a big boom that all of the other people at the range quit firing their weapons and stared at us to see what we had done. I guess they thought we'd snuck some field artillery into the range.

              So Randy grabbed the coffee crystals and grabbed his gun with the powder horn and proceeded to spill black powder and coffee all over the kitchen.  By the time he thought he had it loaded, the dog had finished his business and gone on to less mundane things. “That’s Ok,” Randy said, “He’ll be back.”  

            Sure enough, that afternoon the Dane was back and Randy was ready. Things couldn’t have worked out better.  The dog sniffed around and found a patch of grass that he hadn’t killed right in front of the front door.  He circled around and positioned himself to where his rear was facing Randy and the big gun.  Randy took careful aim and pulled the trigger. “FWOOOSH!” went the gun. The freeze dried coffee vaporized before it hit the end of the barrel. Out of the barrel came a long stream of brown coffee smoke.   The dog didn’t even stop doing his thing.  He just turned his head and gave Randy this look as if to say, “Hey big boy, if you don’t like my using your yard as a toilet, why don’t you just come on out here and give me a big ol’ kick?” With Randy being college educated and all that, he wasn’t about to try to kick a dog that could tear his leg off. Adding insult to injury, the wind blew the smoke cloud back into Randy’s face and made him look like an old Vaudeville comic.

              After Randy washed off the brown patina his face was so red I thought he was going to have a fit.  He grabbed his Daniel Boone hand-book and read up on how to shoot dogs with rock salt.  Then he hopped in his little MG and went off to buy the necessary ingredients, mostly some rock salt and some linen to make rock salt slugs with.   That night he made his ammunition, cleaned the big gun of the coffee residue and loaded it to lay in wait for the return of the dog.

              Bright and early the next morning his big chance came.  The dog wasn’t as accommodating as he was the previous day and didn’t position his rear so as to give Randy a good shot from the front door.  Randy had to run in my bedroom where I was sleeping off the effects of my staying out all night, drinking beer and telling all of our buddies about Randy’s freeze dried coffee mask.  

              He dropped to one knee, took careful aim, and let the dog have it.   “KABOOM!” went the gun. “Yipe, yipe, yipe!” went the dog. “ARRGHHH!” I went coming out of my bed with the worst early morning wakeup of my life.

               On top of scaring me right out of my wits, Randy had neglected to open the window and remove the screen.  There in the middle of my window was a hole the size of a 45 rpm record and the shredded screen was knocked halfway across the yard.  

             Our neighbors, who were all peering out of their windows wondering what the big kaboom was all about, were treated to the sight of Randy bursting out of our front door with me in my skivvies chasing after him, cussing and throwing anything I could get my hands on.

              “Naw Randy,” I promised him, “It’ll be a long time before I embarrass you by writing about that story.”  I didn’t lie; it takes a long time for this computer to boot up.

(This column was originally published in the Round Rock Leader.   It has since been modified and is available for your publication.)