The Wuff with the Smooth: Unforgiven

It’s like the OK Corral in our house of late. Shots have been fired but thankfully, all the main players (me and the hound) are still standing.

“This house isn’t big enough for the both of us, you varmint,” I told Waffle after his latest infraction of said house’s rules. A tense standoff then ensued but Waffle just narrowed his eyes Clint Eastwood-style.

“Draw, Godamit!” no-one said.

The new problem, it has latterly emerged is that Waffle has taken to rooting around in the bin under the sink and subsequently scattering detritus all around the kitchen floor.

“Tarnation! You’d think you was never fed.”

As Waffle skulked around the kitchen like a licked member of the Clanton gang, I resisted the urged to pluck my marshal star off my chest and fire it in his direction. I mean, I was hardly toting my six-shooter at the time – which was probably for the best.

Our bin (before it had come to be unmolested by the hairy varmint), lives inside the kitchen cupboard under the sink. The cupboard door in question is one of those slow-closing types but over time it has become a little sticky, which is to say, you have to push it closed or it doesn’t arrive at its destination. On those occasions when someone has tossed something into the trash (as the gunslingers call it), the opportunistic bandit has taken to sidling in and hijacking the bin, before making off with his loot and then scattering it around the kitchen. It’s the kind of heist nobody really needs in their life, especially when a body is trying to catch some shut-eye after a long day on the trail.

“There’ll be no beans and jerky for you tonight, pilgrim,” I told Deputy Dawg after his first bin-hoking excursion.

“Ah, quit your belly-achin’,” he seemed to say.

Thereafter, the town marshal (me) decreed that whosoever doesn’t close the bin cupboard door properly would be thrown into the clink and, for a time, all was well. Then the bandit struck again.

I was at work one afternoon and I received a telegram from my other deputy (Herself) who said, “Desperate Dog has figured out how to open the cupboard door even when it’s properly closed.”

I didn’t have to enquire as to the resulting mess when this transgression took place but I safely assumed that he and I would duel it out when I revisited the ranch.

Upon my return, I realised however that I would have to temper my rage. Without being caught red handed (pawed), Wild Bill Hiccup wouldn’t learn his lesson and so a duel in the saloon would be moot. I was gonna have to play it cool.

“Hell’s comin’ with me, you hear? Hell’s comin’ with me!” I nevertheless raged.

In the end, I decided to stake out the saloon on a Saturday evening when it was just me and Silly the Kid at the ranch. As a tumbleweed blew past the saloon window, I was sitting at the island nursing a sarsaparilla. I noticed the varmint slink into the kitchen but I paid him no mind. It was only as his nose poked into the cupboard door to winkle it open that I sprang into action.

“You gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?” I demanded of the hound, who had stepped back after the door swung open. “I seen what you was fixin’ to do – don’t deny it!”

But Messy James just eyed me, as if ‘spectin’ me to draw first.

He seemed to say, “A dog’s got to do what a dog’s got to do.”

“Git!” I told him and hefted my bottle of sarsaparilla as if to let fly.

The bandit fled.

After much brooding about the situation, I have come to a sad conclusion. If I can’t teach an old bandit new tricks, we’ve gonna have to mosey on down to the general store and look for a new-fangled gadget to secure the door.

In the end, the sheriff was no match for a bandit with paws – but a child lock might be.