Ben's Encounter with the Dark Side

Ben has this thing about shoes. He may eat out the insides whenever he can sneak one out of the closet, but he has a great deal of respect for any that are on a foot. I'm not sure why, since I have never kicked him--stepped on him a time or two, planted a gentle "Heel!" reminder on his breastbone with the side of my shoe from time to time, tripped over him in the dark, but never have I come even close to kicking him. Regardless, shod feet are his worst nightmare--well at least they used to be.

Tonight we were walking home from the Post Office when a car rushed past and it's canine occupant yelled out the window at Ben, "Your mother wears army boots!" Now, Ben has some rather curious circuitry that causes his ears to turn off when his nose is on. Ben's nose was on when the brute sped past, so by the time he switched from his olfactory circuit to his auditory circuit, the only part of the rant remaining in the air was "...boots!" Having no context, Ben assumed it was a warning. He didn't know if boots were coming to get him, boots were lurking in the bushes, or boots were falling from heaven--all he knew was that boots knew where he was. He was spooked. Every rustling leaf made him jump; every corner was an opportunity for ambush; a passing car warranted furtive backward glances.

Speaking of spooked, it's nearly Halloween. The neighbors have ghosts and tombstones and pumpkins and all manner of oddly-shaped paraphernalia in their yards. The best one is about half a block from home. It's a stupendous display of inner-lighted, inflatable yard art--from stacked pumpkins and ghost trains to a giant pumpkin with a ghost rising from the center to hover about 8 feet in the air before collapsing back into the pumpkin, and--get this--a huge 4-foot tall, lighted-from-the-inside, inflated (meaning hissing) black boot.

Now remember, Ben was already spooked. When he saw that boot, he stopped cold. On quivering legs he crept, belly 3 inches from the ground, nose stretched out (I think if he could have detached his nose and sent it on a scouting expedition, he would have), inching toward the boot--his rational mind told him that it was harmless, but his subliminal wolf side, with a darkly fresh prophetic warning, dominated his mesolimbic pathway. Just as he passed the guy line, the ghost in the adjoining pumpkin deflated back into it's lair with a decided sissssss. Ben spun on a dime, tangled his feet in the guy line, levitated backwards nonetheless, and, of course, the boot surged toward him. His eyes were the size of saucers when he hit me broadside at 97 miles per hour. He had levitated sufficiently from his belly crawl that the brunt of his force hit me square in the thighs.

My hips snapped backward, my shoulders snapped forward and my head snapped both directions, causing an eternal nanosecond of eerie fluorescent halos and starry apparitions to appear around the neighbor's inflatables. When I finally emerged from the nether regions, I was on hands and knees and Ben was straining at the end of his leash, eyes rolled back in his head, tail tucked all the way to his chin and a crooked line of piss snaking from the swaying boot to his quaking ass.

Poor Ben. I have no notion how long it will take him to recover his dignity or walk past that neighbor's yard or...no I'm not throwing out my boots.