Monday Mischef November 28

Elka is, in general, very good. Maybe not harp and halo good, but when she's "bad", we can typically tell why.

Sometimes, though, she chews things. I mentioned this last week with the wall, and now I'm mentioning it again, with a different example: Chap Stick.

Now, Morgan, one of the dogs on  Tales and Tails, has already been a Chap Stick culprit, and I am in no way trying to steal her thunder. But Elka was, apparently.

We have a coffee table, and the coffee table has stuff on it. That's just a way of life. 99% of the time, Elka leaves that stuff alone. Sometimes, though, she's bored, or something catches her fancy, and she does a thing like take a paper towel and shred it.  This time, though, we were one week into my being mostly down with a flu-cold-unpleasantness. So, I had some Burt's Bees (much like Morgan's "mom" did) and left it on the coffee table, where Elka had never bothered it before. I was upstairs sorting laundry and, on a hunch, called Elka.

She came to the top of the stairs and obviously had something in her mouth. I said "Drop it", and she did immediately. It was the Burt's Bees, medicated with Clove Oil, sans cap. I told her she was good for dropping it, which she was, and ran downstairs, hoping to find the cap. I don't think it would be big enough, really, to cause a problem, but don't want to take that chance. The cap was on the couch, smashed out of recognition, other than being red. So, Elka had gnawed the cap off of the tube, and then my Mischief Sense tingled and I called her before she got any further. The Burt's Bees was, alas, covered in dog hair (and had been in her mouth), so I threw it away.

A different Burt's Bees, not the discarded one. For reference. The clove in this is very understated.