Lucy, Tofu, and Irma

Lucy held her breath, her front paw hovering in mid-step over the leaf-strewn ground.

She breathed in. She breathed out.

Her large, pointy ears twitched and turned trying to tune in to the squirrel’s movements. The squirrel sat at the base of an oak tree turning an acorn in its paws, unaware of the dog that stalked it. Every muscle in Lucy’s body was tense, ready to spring as soon as she snuck up close enough.

“What’ll you do if you catch it?”

Lucy jumped, startled out of her concentration. The little Pomeranian mix who asked her the question could barely keep still with his excitement at her side.

“What?” Lucy asked, disoriented.

“What’ll you do if you catch it?” The little dog asked, his front paws excitedly tippy-tapping under him.

“If I catch it?” Lucy asked, confused. “I don’t know, Tofu….I hadn’t thought about it.”

She hadn’t even considered why she chased squirrels in the first place.

“Will you eat it?” Tofu asked.

“Gross, no!” Lucy responded, disgusted. The squirrel dropped his acorn at Lucy’s outburst before scrambling up the tree. A serious look passed over her face as she gave up the chase. “Ok, maybe I would.”

Lucy walked past the tree slowly, refusing to look at the squirrel angrily chittering at her.

“We have to eat something,” Lucy sighed.

Tofu was quiet now, but even Lucy could tell he could hardly keep his words inside. She asked him not to bring it up again. He would say he wanted tofu, the food that gave him his nickname. He didn’t care if it was the orange sticky kind, the brown slimy kind, or even the dry stuff that looked a bit like his hairless tummy. He’d happily eat any of it. There was a place his humans called Chy Nuh-wun that would give it to them in boxes not much smaller than his whole body! It sounded great, but Lucy wasn’t some naive house dog.

“Alright, go ahead, you can say one thing about it.” Lucy relented.

Tofu let out a relieved breath as if he’d been holding it. “Ok, so this might be an important detail that I just remembered: They also had a spicy kind. It made my gums feel weird so I would do this.”

Tofu pulled his lips far back baring his teeth and squinted his eyes. He looked as if he were grimacing like he just watched a dog eat its own poop (which, incidentally, he also said he’d once watched another dog do at “daycare”, whatever that was). Lucy wondered how long he would hold this face if she didn’t say anything.

A long time, it turns out.

He just kept grimacing. He looked up at the squirrel to show it his weird face, but turned to Lucy again when it was clear the squirrel didn’t care. Lucy didn’t say anything, so Tofu scrunched his lips back farther and squinted his eyes harder. Strange dog.

“Ok, Tofu, I get it. It was spicy and it —”

POOF!

On the ground right between the two dogs was the squirrel, dazed and on its back. It had apparently miscalculated a leap between trees and fallen.

In the space of a quiet second and a half each of the three animals sorted out if they were to chase or be chased in this unexpected situation.

And then they exploded after each other: the frenzied squeaking squirrel pursued by the howling street dog trailed by the yapping Pomeranian.

All twelve feet pounded the ground in perhaps the fastest chase these swampy woods had ever seen. Unfortunately for the squirrel, it had burst into a wide field of saw palmetto, far too short of a plant for it to climb to safety. Instead the three animals wound around clumps of the squat palms. The trio scrambled after each other, in and out of narrow trails carved out by possums and marsh rabbits.

The squirrel turned sharply then exploded with speed on straight stretches before turning sharply again to lose Lucy but it wasn’t working. Her long legs burned with exhaustion and her paws hurt from the hairpin turns, but she refused to allow any more distance between her and the squirrel.

Lucy could feel her tongue flap out the side of her mouth, the wind flow between and around her ears, the fur on her back stand on end. She matched the squirrel’s turns with her own turns, leap with leap, swoop, dive, duck with swoop, dive, duck. She could feel it in her wet nose and stiff tail. She was on The Hunt, one of the happiest moments in a dog’s life.

Lucy willed her legs to move faster, faster, faster. The distance between her and the squirrel shrank; she could see the hairs on its skinny bouncing tail only a few feet ahead of her. And then she realized the squirrel’s plan: The road.

While the squirrel darted across without a hint of hesitating, Lucy tried stopping as quickly as she could. Her paws gripped the earth beneath her as she slid in the dirt and whirled in a cloud of dust. She came to a standstill just inches short of the asphalt and heaved a sigh of relief.

Tofu, close behind, didn’t slow down at all. He raced right into the road. At the same time an enormous car roared by.