Ernie: A close call

“Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into”, said Oliver Hardy to Stan Laurel. [*]

Ernie recently managed to get us into one of those situations. [Although in our case I am not always sure who is Stan and who is Oliver?]

His nature is to go wherever his nose takes him: rabbits, field mice or rats, and grass hoppers are the usual targets; that’s his outside resume 24×7.

I wasn’t really worried about his getting into trouble except if he was chasing a snake, and that would have been a first since he encountered one earlier in the year and wisely kept on going.

On this occasion I was enjoying – finally – a respite from the rain, distracted as well by the open fields and the hope of seeing a hawk or two plying its trade. That gave Ernie time to dedicate himself to his proboscis.

Following a scent he had slunk down and crawled under a neat pile of surplus steel and wood. I was amazed he could contort himself to do it, but he did. [The image shows him sniffing around the entry point.]

He was mum but I could hear his happy, metronoming tail hitting the sides of what was an iron tunnel. Once under he had scrunched and advanced along the pile about six feet, and then………………………

PANIC!

The big little guy had reached a dead end:  I heard feverish clawing and increasingly strident cries.

“Ernie, where are you?”, I instinctively yelled.

He was frantic!

I approximated where he was under the pile and lifted a long piece of steel from its edge.

Daylight poured through and illuminated Ernie’s right side; for a few seconds he kept on clawing, his paws and nails clogged with muddied gumbo.

Removing the red iron Ernie was free.

WHEW!

A few shimmy-shakes and he was no worse for wear except that his bottom – from front to back -was covered with Texas’ infamous black dirt.

Carrying him inside to the kitchen wash tub I both cleaned and calmed my buddy with warm water, and then toweled him off.

While he curled up and rested I went back outside and re-visited the scene.

We were both lucky that the outer most piece of steel was a light, channel shape. The adjacent piece was heavy, so much so that I couldn’t budge it. If the pieces had been reversed Ernie would have been trapped for who knows how long before I could have extricated him.

As the days have passed he still finds that pile worthy of sniffs, but his appetite for tunneling has so far been satisfied.

Good boy, Ern.

[*Note: A big desktodirt thank you for the source of the Laurel and Hardy quote goes to: http://www.patfullerton.com/lh/movies/finemess.html]