My morning walk

Most every morning around 6 a.m., I take my two greyhounds, Rufus & Otis (a.k.a. Rutabaga and Oatgorilla), on a mile-long walk on the loop of our neighborhood. This morning,

1) A neighbor parked a car in his front yard and, as we passed, I noticed the headlights were on. I thought I’d check to see if the door was unlocked so I could turn off the lights and save the battery. As I walked around that side of the car, a rabbit who was hiding in their grass revealed himself by bolting away. Rufus & Otis did their best to dislocate my shoulder by leaping through the air after him. Caught in mid-arc, they snarled and snapped at each other. No injuries, but I unleashed a loud, reflexive “HEY HEY STOP!”, which I’m sure the neighbors didn’t appreciate. (The keys were in the ignition, so I took those out and left them on the driver’s seat.)

2) I could hear a neighbor’s dog’s distinct yowl-bark from way down the street. I was resigned to Missy barking at the boys as we passed by, which the neighbors also wouldn’t appreciate. As we got closer to their house, it turned out that Missy was barking because a decent-sized bear was in the yard across the street. Ru & Otis again leaped up to snarl, albeit with a lot less, “Let’s go get him!” action than with the bunny. The bear quickly ambled across the yard on all fours, then got up on its hind legs and placed its front paws on a tree. It was looking at us, and I imagined it was thinking, “C’mon, man, it’s 6 o’clock in the goddamned morning; don’t make me climb a freakin’ tree at this hour. . . .” I walked backwards about 50 feet with the dogs and kept an eye on the bear. The boys snarled a little, but didn’t seem all too eager to go meet the bear. Last I could see of him, he didn’t climb the tree. Missy was still barking her head off.

The bear was smaller than this guy, whose pic I took earlier this summer when he was walking through another neighbor’s yard.

And this, dear reader, is life in Ringwood, NJ.