Well, hmm. That was some kind of a contest. Mary was the only one who could find any kind of sign from the tall husbands on the right, but Lexi was an excellent reader of signs and I do believe hers makes perfect totally insane sense. But that is the kind of sense that works for me so Lexi will soon be adding a beautiful portrait on a neighbor note to her collection of paintings from back when Laura Hartwick was an artist. Maybe this one joins the refrigerator art. My friends who enjoy Team Small Dog cooking shows would probably like her yelling and boozy cooking show, Marsha Hubert.

But I do thank all of you for the very nice ideas and emails and concerns. I know. We have all been here. I have with other animals too. It’s always different and it always sucks. But it’s Tuesday and Timmy is still with us and Lexi says his Spirit Guide is a Slug and we’ll just go with that for now. They’re slow, so Timmy is just slow. And all of you who are worried about him going in to the vet and such, don’t worry. It’s all handled. And I will not be taxidermying him myself. I swear. Timmy will not have to go to the afterlife stuffed and mounted or freeze dried or cryogenically preserved.

Have you ever been driving through Utah and there is the Hole in the Rock cave tour? I prefer visiting places like this over scenic natural beauty when traveling. The kinds of places that have their own bumper stickers and turquoise jewelry in a case and usually involve caves or snakes or things in jars that one usually doesn’t find in jars. Albert Christensen, the man who made his home in a cave that he kept blasting and chiseling out of a mountain to add rooms, learned to taxidermy himself on his beloved pet burros. With visible stitching. When you go there to visit, you will see them. Albert was a man who knew what he was looking for, and he blasted and stitched his way to that thing until he died, back in the ’50’s when his cave turned into a roadside attraction.

I wish I had a giant mountain for Timmy. And I would paint on it, in giant white letters, HELLO TIMMY. And I would get Joel Warner to chisel a portrait of Timmy out of the mountain, with giant chisels and blasting powder, and the portrait would be Timmy except he’d be the size of a motorhome. Up there on the mountain. No. He would be BIGGER than a motorhome. He would be the size of my house. Exactly to scale. And I would drive by on my very own giant backhoe, and see him up there, every day. I would have skills in grading, and I would dig out flat paths and places for us all to dig up gems. Someone asked, would I save a lock of his hair? His collar and tags? Well, yeah. And figure out a monument for him that has the grandeur of a steamboat sized stone dog, careening down a mountain with boulders and white letters more beautiful than even the Hollywood sign or the biggest floating donut sign in the world.