The Windogo

Few things are more tale telling than the morning ritual. Everyone has a set way they get up, get ready, get fueled, and get out the door. Begin to throw wrenches into this near-robotic act, and the outlook of the day can go from cheery to bleak faster than money can leave your pocket in Vegas. But some things can bring it to a halt in an eyebrow raising moment of disgust and laughter.

Take this morning for instance. I was the only one who had to be ready and leave the house for anything due to the snowstorm, and so I started my morning ritual. During which my children rose from their beds, and my wife cooked us breakfast, and we sat at the table and ate happily. Our two labs, Jasper and Tank, who are used to running dawn patrol in the backyard were scampering around the kitchen, anxiously awaiting dropped morsels of “human food” from the table.

This is when Jasper began his olfactory assault like a SEAL Team in the dead of night. Walking by the table he would eek out flatulence without so much as a warning or smirky glance of “take that”. The only indication you had that something was wrong was a faint hiss, much like that of a skilled ninja assassin whispering to his victim “sayonara” before their demise. Then, just as the synapses in your brain decipher what fate is upon you, you find yourself enveloped in the “death cloud”, as if you’ve awoken from a deep sleep to find you town wrapped in some mysterious fog, all senses lost except for ancient survival instincts that have kicked in. You run, only to find that the ninja assassin has laid an intricate string of deadly traps for which there is no escape.

So, does this chain of events bring gloom to a day, or does one drive to work with sly grin and twinkle in the eye saying “My dog is a ninja, rock on.”