On Safari (Or What I Did on My Summer Vacation)

Her Highness, the Crown Regent of Fussy Pants, decided to go on safari after dinner yesterday.

Bettina requested an unscheduled potty break around 7:30p.  This wasn’t at all unusual since she is infamous for going out right after dinner, pretending to do her business and then rushing back to be the first one inside.  She then beelines to Blue’s dinner bowl and cleans up anything Blue may have left, missed or dropped.  The tiniest potential that she may score a pea or a piece of dropped kibble will have her gladly neglecting unimportant things like bodily functions.

Bettina with bite or scratch marks just after her bath.

This is especially true when she can demand that Mumma stop what she is doing and let her out again later on.  Since Mumma isn’t always able to tell when the demand for a potty break is legitimate and Mumma doesn’t like to play Russian roulette with loaded bladders, I let her out and went on with my business.

She seemed to be outside for a very long time.  This in and of itself is not unprecedented but it’s more likely to happen at mid-day when she is in the mood for a sun bath in the sand pit.  After a little while longer, I got up to check on her.  Being a worry wart I begin to picture terrible catastrophes like a random trespasser stopping to open the gate to our yard for fun or maybe a tree falling over and knocking my fence down without making a sound.  True, this could only happen if both the tree and the fence were in the forest and no one was around, but we ARE forest adjacent.  What if that is close enough?

I spotted Bettina heading towards the far corner of our yard with a definite purpose.  At the time, it crossed my mind that she appeared to be tracking or hunting as she zigged and zagged with her head low to the ground, sniffing the air occasionally.  Seeing as how there are no real hiding places in our back yard, and I could see the full expanse, there were no visible targets anywhere within the confines of the fence.  So I shut the door and decided I’d let her tell me when she was ready to come back in.

Eventually she turned up at the back door waiting for the door-Mumma to let her in.  Almost immediately I

Bettina's face this morning.

realized that something wasn’t quite right.  Bettina had a distinct odor about her.  I know you’re all thinking skunk, but it wasn’t.  That is an unmistakable smell.  This smell was very pungent, and not at all pleasant, but at least it didn’t make my eyes water.  I have never smelled a civet cat before but I’ve read that they really stink and that they spray everything.  Bettina smelled exactly like what I imagined someone who had been sprayed by a civet cat would smell like.  Of course, civet cats are not native to the backwoods of Maine.  I believe they’re typically found in Africa or the jungles of South America. 

It is not unheard of for Bettina to find a particularly smelly spot and plonk herself down on it straight away and roll with abandon.  This has been the cause of at least two unscheduled baths in the past.  I figured she must have found the mack daddy of smelly spots in our back yard (still being concerned with the possibility of a wild, extremely lost, civet cat). 

At first I thought I could live with the smell until it wore off.  But with each breath the smell wormed it’s way into my brain until it was all I could smell.  I realized that living with it was not going to be an option.  Then picturing Bettina jumping up onto my bed to sleep with me that night spurred me to immediate action.  Not being one to be too rash, I broke out the grooming wipes and wiped her down several times.  She soon stank of civet cat AND Mango Tango.  Worse still, she began trying to rub and roll on the carpet trying to get rid of that horrible mango scent. 

Poor Miss Bean's face at lunch time.

I had no choice but to wrestle her into the bathtub.  There were multiple sessions of soaping and rinsing.  I would have soaped her a few more times but she began to collapse against the side of the tub in a faint.  Now this would be completely like Bettina as dramatic as she can be, but I had actually read about greyhounds who faint in warm water baths.  I had never seen one.  I certainly didn’t know I was living with one.  But then again, I also didn’t know I had a civet cat in my back yard.  One that was very good at hiding.

As I was drying her off, I noticed she had a series of scratches or bite marks on her cheek.  The warm water had caused them to bleed.  And to top it off, I could still catch faint whiffs of Eau de Civet Chaton.  The only thing that fully washed off was the Mango Tango.

After wetting the entire house down after her bath, she lay on the other end of the sofa and gave me the hairy eyeball while wafting the occasional puff of weak civet cat in my direction.  Somewhere in my backyard is a sneaky civet cat desperately trying to rub off the smell of domestic greyhound.  Bettina got to have the adventure and Mumma had to write the essay.

Post Script:  As a result of her wild game hunt, Bettina’s cheek and eye swelled up quite shockingly the following day.  Mumma is treating it with ice packs, anti-inflammatories and Stella and Chewy’s treats.  Bettina is bravely holding her own.  When she declined dinner tonight, Mumma started to really curse civet

Bettina's face at dinner time.  (We apologize for the quality of these
cell phone photos and Mumma's increasingly shaky, worried
hand.)

cats. 

Post Post Script:  We have subsequently discussed this incident with Grammy.  In her youth, Mumma was always told by Grammy that there were fishers in the woods behind our house and that they ate little kids.  We always laughed at her and made fun of her because fishers are not common and they rarely show themselves.  For a long time we didn’t even believe that a fisher was a real animal.  Grammy has conducted a little research and she feels she has now been vindicated and that this unprecedented attack on Bettina was conducted by a fisher.  We’re still laughing at her.  Kind of.