Diplomad vs. Godzilla

Let's take a little break from the usual writing about the heavy-hearted silliness that is destroying Western civilization. Let's, instead, discuss light-hearted mortal combat (sorta) at the Diplohouse.

Your humble servant and the Diplowife were in the process of loading dogs and a few other odds-and-ends into the ol' Silverado truck for the weekly 65 mile drive to our other home. I was in the garage getting the dog leashes and just coming into the adjoining Diplomancave when I saw Txiki, our goofy Shepherd/Dane mix, sitting in the middle of the room staring at something on the carpet. I thought Txiki had made a dog mess on the carpet, something he has never done. I yelled this piece of what turned out to be CNN-type fake news to the Diplowife who was in a corner of the cave tending to Hartza, our grumpy Akita/Shepherd, who was grumpily trying a new dog bed--he doesn't like change.

The Diplowife walked over to Txiki and the focus of his attention. A soul-piercing scream followed. The Diplowife backed up and breathlessly reported, "A giant lizard! Txiki has killed a giant lizard!" Regular readers of this little blog will recall that the Diplowife has a different measuring standard than most of us when dealing with wildlife (here, here).  It must be that she thinks in metric. That aside, a new drama had commenced!

Sir Txiki, Slayer of Dragons

Diplowife retreated to the Diplomancave's newly redone Diplobathroom from whence she continued to emit vows and screams and issue orders. "I am leaving this house and never coming back! Get that monster out of my house! Don't flush it down the toilet! They crawl back out! Is it dead?" You get the idea.

While I am not a person generally given to panic, I confess to having what you might consider a near-Biblical aversion to reptiles and amphibians. I do not like those creatures. Even as a lad I never shared my friends' love for snakes, lizards, frogs, and toads. With my many years in the tropics, my aversion for the cold-blooded ones grew stronger. I have never considered cobras, kraits, gators, crocs, etc., as my friends; they are magnificent, awesome survivors from another age, but I do not find them cuddly or want them around me. I have never been enamored of the various geckos, iguanas, and water monitor lizards that at various times shared our Diplodigs with us. I wish them no harm, but I wish them to go away (my motto for progressives, too).

With that said, you would rightly conclude that I was not perfectly cast to play the hero in this play. The setting? Well, we had a rather chubby lizard, I think either an alligator lizard or a fence lizard, belly-up on our carpet presided over by a very proud Txiki. I got a dust pan and wrapped my hand in a plastic bag and gently prodded and slid the beast onto the pan. I was not going to touch it. The thing, of course, only played dead, as I could see some breathing action. I walked past the hysterical Diplowife, out of the house, through the garage, and out to the front of the house where I tossed Godzilla into some bushes. It immediately scampered away. Thinking my job done, I proudly returned to the house to report "Mission accomplished!" only to find the Diplowife pointing at the floor and yelling, "The tail! You left the tail!" More plastic bag and dust pan action, and the tail, too, departed the premises. Txiki was not amused at the poor reception his trophy had elicited from us.

While the rest of America was focussed on the increasingly absurd wire-tapping scandal, this is what I was doing. At least, I can understand this . . .