Oh. Em. Gee, you guys! I need to warn you about Thursdays. Thursdays are the days that the loud rolling things come out to stand sentry on the sidewalks. You can hear them all over the neighborhood on Wednesday nights, growling as they roll out from their hiding places out to take their posts. I don’t know what they’re doing there, but they definitely don’t belong, and that’s suspicious. And when we run by them, all kinds of unfamiliar smells come out. I’ve seen some of them try to take over the space around them by spitting out more Things that Don’t Belong: boxes, toys, Christmas trees, sometimes even large pieces of furniture. It’s spooky to run past them because I know they move when I’m not looking, but when I look at them they stand still as a stone. And sometimes, they even lie down and open their big maws and wait for less alert dogs than me to come sniff them.. and that’s when they gobble their victims up.
Today was a Thursday, and the Scary Sentries were all along all the sidewalks on our way to My Trail. That put me on edge, so when I saw a bag of something lying in the gutter across the street away from any of the monsters, I was convinced it was the next step of the invasion. I wouldn’t take my eyes off that bag, even when I had to turn my head around backward to look at it. And I made sure to keep barking and growling at it till we were out of sight. Thank goodness, my precautions kept us safe and it didn’t attack us.
But then we turned a corner and something even scarier happened. Out of nowhere, this woman *walked out of her front door!* Aaaaaaaaahhhh! But it gets even scarier… (you might want to ask kids to leave the room here)! She kept advancing and she was holding something in her hand. Whatever she was holding was big, and made a crackling noise when it moved. I barked so hard at her that I had to stop moving, then I barked some more. And she kept coming! As she got to the sidewalk, she lifted the scary crackly thing in the air clearly getting ready to launch her attack. Mom was trying to pull me away to safety, and in general working herself into a tizzy, but I was brave and kept barking. The enemy lady walked right up to the Scary Sentry on the sidewalk, opened it up, and fed the crackling thing to it while it was STILL CRACKLING! Then the Scary Sentry slammed its mouth shut with a bang and the thing stopped crackling. It was dead. Only then did the lady go back in her house and I let Mom pull me away to safety.
You really need to be careful on Thursdays.
–Oscar the Pooch
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