Pete and Adele

I don’t remember ever being too hot to play outside, or too tired to run all the way home from a friend’s house and then jumping that ditch in the nick of time. I had to jump that ditch. That ditch had things in it that crawled and had legs with claws. Turns out they were crawdads. I think some people call them crawfish. Nevertheless, I thought they were just about the scariest things I had ever seen and ever hoped to see in the future.

That ditch was to be avoided at all costs, which took a little doing since it ran all the way across the front of our house and it rained a lot in our area. Heavy rains brought that ditch even closer to the house. I know because I watched it. Our front yard did have a place of great safety…..the swing hanging under the giant oak tree. If I could get to it during high tide without encountering one of those crawling things, I would jump onto it and look down at the water with a smug sense of security.

Some people said that Pete was a rat terrier. That seemed OK to me. I figured that the name had something to do with his size, until someone else told me that rat terriers are very, very good at finding rat holes and digging out the occupant. Good grief! Not my dog! I forgot Pete’s calling in life until the day my Daddy said that the neighbors down the road from us wanted to borrow Pete to help get rid of some rats in their barnyard. That was almost more than I could stand, so I went in the house and hid. Of course no one was looking for me, but for some reason it was comforting to hide.

Quite a while had passed as I huddled in the dirty clothes hamper, in the dark, when suddenly I heard a dog’s yelping coming closer and closer.

I ran out in the yard just in time to see Pete arrive back on our property and run under the house. Obviously, he also found it comforting to hide. Later Daddy told me that Pete had found the rats, got a good look, then ran for home. So much for names.

To read earlier blogs about Pete and me, go here:

Me, Pete and the Chickens

Trapped in the Doghouse

See you next time,