The clown that cried wolf

I bought a new torch last week, seeing as how it was payday and I felt like JR for the day.

“A new torch – clam down, Rockefeller!”

I know, I know… The thing is: I had a torch but I wanted something with a little more oomph (or in torch language, a little more in the way of lumens).

One night after Christmas, aul Waff was caught short and I awoke to a huge scoop of chocolate ice-cream decorating the back hall floor (it wasn’t actually chocolate ice-cream; I’m trying to be delicate here).

For his part, the Hound didn’t require any scolding; he never does brown scoops in the house and I could tell by his contrite countenance that he had simply been bursting in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep and he couldn’t get out of the back hall.

“Come to think of it,” I mused over breakfast after the chocolate had been removed and the area deep-cleaned, “I thought I heard him whining in the night-time.”

“Why didn’t you get up and let him out then?” someone asked.

The answer to that was simple: He never shuts his mouth at the best of times and so if he whines all the live long day when night arrives, and he’s still whining, I tend to ignore it. He’s the hound that called wolf.

“It’s not my fault he took a dump in the back hall,” I said by way of defending myself (delicacy be damned).

However, as it was generally accepted that it was my fault, I have taken up the habit of escorting His Hairyness on night-time excursions ahead of lights out, he with his requirement and me with my torch. These forays into the cold can be a short walk up and down the road or shorter still, a stand-about in the garden until he does or doesn’t need to off-load any superfluous lumber. This is where my torch comes into play.

My original torch was a cheapo purchase made once upon a time when I didn’t really know anything about torches or lumens. The result was a bottle-sized contraption which only really worked as an illuminating device if you were standing right on top of what you wanted to illuminate. However as for keeping an eye on a bursting canine who habitually trots up and down the road (or garden) in order to find the perfect place for his deposit, it was next to useless. Enter the new torch!

Advertised at lighting up an object up to 150 metres away, I considered that the Blukar LED rechargeable looked perfect for the jobbie in hand – or jobbie out of hand, as I wanted the case to be.

After it arrived at the homestead and I switched the Blukar on, such was it’s illuminating qualities that I considered that I wouldn’t even have to follow Waffle outside of an evening. But then I remembered he doesn’t like going out on his own and will simply sit at the backdoor until an escort (me) gets fed up waiting on him to attend to his own toilet.

“Come on, clown,” I therefore tell him most evenings, and we head outside.

As well being perfect for keeping an eye on aul Waff, the new torch has also proven quite powerful for keeping an eye on the other denizens of the dark, namely, the peripatetic herd of wayfaring Sika deer which regularly visit our garden and the fields around our garden.

You may remember from previous instalments, but the deer have been quite destructive in recent years in terms of eating any young trees that I’ve planted, depositing their own jobbies and generally hoofing up the lawn. As such, any time, day or night, when I notice the deer royally stepping around the garden like they own the place, I open the back door and unleash the Waff. “Right, Waffle – Get them!” I command, and the Hound erupts out of the house with a roar like Scooby-Doo’s long lost cousin, Savage-Doo.

Usually, this has the desired affect and the deer desist with their destruction and disperse.

However on Thursday of last week, all did not quite go to plan.

That night, after taking Waffle out for his poo around midnight and after I had royally stepped around the garden for a while like I owned the place (which I do), I noticed a pair of yellow eyes shining back at me, down the barrel of my lightsaber torch. The deer was in the field below me, perhaps 50 yards away.

“Wow,” ses I, staring down at the two sparkling stars.

Averting my gaze, I tramped up the garden to the gap in the hedge to better discern how the Blukar might work in total darkness and with a target which wasn’t a pooing dog. As if on cue, Waffle whined at my feet. “Shut up, dawg!” I hissed, remembering the Red Squirrel debacle.

Arriving at that gap in the hedge, I flicked the Blukar beam around to find the pair of sparkling stars. How surprised was I to find not one pair, but more than 20.

“Wow,” ses I, for the second time.

Screwing the torch up to full output, I scanned the field, watching spellbound as the Sika stepped regally across the field, individuals stopping now and again to stare into the beam of the torch. And this was where the Blukar came into its own. Fully illuminating the deer just 50 yards away, the torch was still able to pick out pairs of eyes away on the far side of the field, maybe 200 yards away and all of those in-between; a sparkling, earth-bound constellation.

I flicked the torch around the field and stopped counting when I reached 20 pairs of yellow eyes.

“Wow,” ses I, for the third time. So these were the buggers that had been clambering into my garden under the cover of nightfall and eating all my shrubs.

“Right Waffle,” I said aloud and immediately realised that I’d made a mistake of epic proportions. I had meant, “Right Waffle, let’s go inside.” But Waffle took the, “Right Waffle,” as a precursor to, “Right Waffle – Get them!”

Like some sort of dwarven antelope, the Hound cleared the hedge and was away into the field before I could even draw breath to speak. Knowing that he had ventured into a supremely mucky environment made me cringe inwardly and yet even then I couldn’t bid him return. The problem was: Waffle had initiated a deer stampede and the sound of upwards of 25 Sika thundering past the house kinda made me choke on my own voice. And the fact that this was happening in the dead of night and me with a high-powered torch to pick up the source of the thunder, was an experience to rock me back on my heels.

“Waffle’s gonna be an utter mess coming outta that field,” I little voice sounded in my head.

At last, I was wrenched me back to my senses.

“WAAAAA-FLE!”

… to be continued