Soon after Gretchen left for work at around noon, I went out to the end of the driveway near the road to scoop up Marie (aka "the Baby"), as it seemed she was getting too close and she's so fearless I feared she'd just stand in the road if a car were to appear. At that point I noticed that Sally the dog was across the street, which is always a no-no. So I scolded her and ordered her back. As she drew close, I noticed a sprinkle of stiff new whiskers on the side of her mouth. She'd been quilled by a porcupine.
The quilling must have just happened, because most of the quills that I could reach could be pulled out easily. For a moment there I even thought I'd gotten them all. But then I opened up her mouth and saw a sprinkling of black quills embedded in the roof of her mouth just behind the incisors. She wouldn't let me pull any of those out, though believe me I tried.
This was how Sally came to spend the day at the Hurley vet, eventually running up a bill of over $400 by the time she'd gotten all her overdue shots, had a growth removed from her mouth, and had some unnecessary bloodwork "because she's an older dog." Supposedly, though, she's still covered by pet insurance so we'll probably only end up spending a fraction of that.
I picked up Sally late in the afternoon and she was still woozy on her feet from having been under total anæsthesia. In the past I gave Sally too much credit, thinking she'd learned from her bad experiences with porcupines. Clearly, though, she's still thinks there are things to be gained by attempting to take bites out of them.
Where is the ylonghoyurays? A long hope of bravo! That expression makes no sense at all, but it seems to work in the context of the following clip on YouTube:
The MP3 of this song is so strangely compelling that it has entered the rotation in my list of MP3s. If I were you, I'd get all the watching I could out of the YouTube video before the black-eared overlords of American culture have it removed (though, to me at least, it seems like appropriate reuse).
