Humor – The Tuscaloosa Oatmeal Explosion

It is a vicious lie that dogs are loyal to their owners. They’re loyal to the person who’s most recently given them a handful of Milk-Bones. Becker, my old fat beagle, would forget who I was if someone, say Judas Iscariot, offered him a T-bone. I’m confident that, if a burglar broke into my house, Becker would saunter up to him, plop down on his haunches and wait for a bacon-fat sandwich. When the burglar didn’t produce, Becker would then go back to his kennel and think about, maybe, barking at 5:30 the next morning.

(As a side note: Becker actually does bark a lot, especially when I’m trying to take a nap. He’s a great guard dog for the early-to-late afternoon.)

Becker just loves to eat. In the best “grad student with one beer too many” tradition, I’ve tried to feed him everything except chocolate and onions. The only thing he doesn’t care for is tomatoes. He ate lemons, peel and all, but he won’t touch a raw tomato.

I made chili dogs for dinner once. I sat them down on the table and went to get a Coke. I came back and they were gone. The buns were still on the plate. Becker looked at me and laid on the floor. His eyes said “Hey Pete, gonna share that Coke?”

Becker happily lays around and changes all of this random food to poop. He’s never gotten sick from eating something wrong, presumably because his metabolism is too slow for food-borne bacteria to multiply. The was one food, however, that made him so ill that my living room looked like the set for Bodily Fluids 3: The Spewing. That food was dry oatmeal.

I had just went grocery shopping and had tried to stuff everything into the pantry. The oatmeal, a nearly-full can of it, was a bit too close to the edge. Evidence pieced together from the crime seem indicates that Becker jumped up on his food bucket, pushed the oatmeal off the shelf and ate the entire can in about twelve seconds. It reacted with the acids and other liquids in his stomach, expanded and began to eject itself from Becker in a manner that scientists call “from everywhere at once.

I came home from work and found the living room coated in a thick layer of brown foam. Becker was sitting in the middle of the room. I called the vet and explained what had happened. ‘He’s going to be sick a few more times, but it’ll pass.” Don’t you just love vet humor? I’m surprised he didn’t charge me $100 for the call.

“What do you mean, ‘ sick a few more times’? I don’t think he has anything left…”

“HYEEEEEEEEEEAAAAARGHAAACKAACKAAHHHHHCK!”

I turned around. The living room was now covered in a thin yellow layer of foam. Becker was in the middle of it, wagging his tail. To my surprise, he was not turned inside-out.

“I’m going to have to let you go.”

Becker was all right the next day, though I lost my security deposit and expected a call from OSHA. I went out that night and bought Captain Crunch. If oatmeal was dangerous to my dog, I would make that sacrifice and instead eat lots and lots of cereal.

It’s a tough thing, to give up health food for your dog.

Tagged as: humor