Thursday, May 26, 2016

Of Birthdays and Berwick



There I am, in my new birthday outfit, and with a hint as to my age cleverly hidden in the picture.  Can you guess how old I am? 

I'm not the only with a birthday recently, Joshua had one on Saturday, and four of his friends had them recently too, so he wasn't the only one receiving gifts Saturday.

A big group gathered at our house, and then walked down to the beach to play the traditional game of Capture the Flag.  I stayed home, to direct latecomers and to "have a hen party" as Paul teasingly said.  I had just let some people out of the gate, when I realized Berwick wasn't in sight.  It's unusual that our German Shepherd leaves her post at the gate for any length of time, so I called her, concerned she might have followed the group to the beach. 

There was a bumping noise right near me. I looked down into the deep, dark depths of  her doghouse
and there was Berwick, or Berwicked as we call her at times like this, with a beautiful green present!  It was a gift for Simon Eric, a precious gift of Biltong, one of South Africa's national treasures!  It's a dried meat, like beef jerky, delicious stuff!  And Berwick had sneaked into our kitchen and stolen it out of a bag. 

This was rotten timing.  I was just ready to launch her career as an object lesson, inspired by Dr. Bill Rice's book Brother Super, and now she'd gone and ruined her reputation.  Brother Super was Dr. Bill Rice's Great Dane, and he wrote that book with funny, funny stories in it, that dissolved our whole family into laughter when we read it for a family read aloud. 

Before despair had a chance to set in, I remembered that not all of Dr. Bill Rice's lesson from Brother Super were wonderful.  I remember one where Super pulled up an entire orchard of baby trees that Dr. Rice had planted.  Twice!   Maybe Berwick can still be an object lesson.        






 

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