Fire!!!

***Gardnervile, NV; June 1996***

No doubt Bernie and Poocie were at my side when I took this photo of the Autumn Hills fire at the foothills of the Carson Valley. Two teenagers were pouring gasoline on lizards and lighting them on fire. Guess what? The lizards ran while aflame! Oops, bet they never thought of that. If I remember correctly, the two teens were levied a six-figure financial penalty for their doings. To read an ironic twist (as if the lizards aren't enough) about this fire, click here.

So what does this have to do with Bernie, besides the fact we had to breathe smoke for days? Well, Bernie used to chase lizards. Rather, she would pounce after them. They're pretty small, about the size of an extended finger, and while we were in the mountains, she'd walk up to boulders, lizards would run, and she would pounce and bounce like a kitty cat after them. Occasionally, she'd get one under her paw, but they always managed to squirt away before she could gnaw on them. Similarly, while in Sacramento we had easy access to a "park", which in essence was a big ol' plot of untouched land. It was pretty cool, just dirt and tall grass and a creek and cute soccer moms and HUGE jackrabbits that would scare the living you know what out of you when they sprang from their cover in the tall grass! The first time that happened, I thought it was a kangaroo. Seriously. Anyway, the similarly part is that there were these bush/tree things that were just a tangled mess of branches that came up from the earth and wrapped back down to the ground. So like a dome of sorts, only dense tangles of branches. So yeah, the similarly part was that Bernie would chase these little ground squirrels, faster than lightning they are, and they'd inevitably scramble under these bush/trees. They made this chirping sound, and Bernie quickly figured out that the chirp meant ground squirrel, and the ground squirrels hung out in the bush/trees. So she spent a lot of time jumping in those bush/trees, getting stuck in them, but I wouldn't help because those trees screamed, "Mr. Man, don't mess with me." I'd get so frustrated at Bernie's compulsion, I'd be like, "Bernie, come onnnnnnnn," but she'd just pounce after those little suckers on and on and on. More than once I left her there, which was stupid, because to get home Bernie had to cross a busy street. But she always made it safely, often she was waiting at the apartment steps for me when I got home. I never figured out how she managed that.

So there you have it, Bernie chased lizards like the ones that started the fire, and she carried over that cat-like prowess to the flatlands of Sacramento to hunt the ground squirrels.

The end.