Whoa Nellie!

Nellie lives at Gloria’s house. The story goes that she appeared one day with a collar and no tags, bit whole pieces out of the doors for days until they let her inside, and then never left.

She’s mostly pit-bull, physically, but supposedly, she’s a big fraidy cat. I know she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. She can’t be alone. Usually, when I’m there (assuming Gloria is at work), Nellie lies practically under my chair. When I go to another room, she goes. When I go to the door, she goes too. When I go to the bathroom, she lays outside the door until I come out. Interestingly enough, she wanders off a lot. Gloria says she goes wherever she hears construction workers. It seems that Nellie has to be retrieved from houses around the neighborhood frequently.

She is absolutely obsessed with her kong. Kong is always around and Nellie likes for you to throw Kong down the hill several times a day. She lets me know when I am shirking my kong-throwing duties by butting my leg with her head. Before I first went over to the house, my parents instructed me re: Kong. “Do not touch the kong. Do not look at the kong. In fact, don’t ever acknowledge that the kong exists.” Apparently, they made the mistake of throwing Kong one night while having dinner out on the porch. Nellie relentlessly insisted that they continue throwing Kong for the next three hours. (above: Nellie & Kong in the yard)

And it’s like Nellie knew I had been warned about Kong. The first night I was there, she walked up to me and tried to put Kong on my lap. “I was told not to acknowledge the kong!” I almost screamed. Fortunately, Gloria took Kong away at that moment and placed him in the bar sink where he resides.

Mom says Nellie’s a changeling. I’m still not sure what I think. She seems like a dog in a lot of ways, but then again, tonight Gloria pointed out what looked to be opposable thumbs that Nellie was using to hold Kong in place for a good chew.

This afternoon Nellie had gone AWOL yet again and I went to retrieve her from the neighbors, who had called earlier that day. Well, they weren’t exactly neighbors. I had to drive up the road a little and then all of the way around the ridge overlooking Radnor Lake. When I arrived, I didn’t find anyone at home except for the men who were taking down a dead tree in the yard – ah, the familiar construction worker draw. I asked one if he had seen a “reddish pit-bull sort of dog,” around, he said “oh, yeah, she’s great!” and that the owners had taken her into the house. Super.

I wandered around for a few minutes before I heard Nellie’s tags clinking away in the driveway. When I called her, she just bounded right on over as if to say, “Look at this new house I found! I spent the whole day here and they let me sleep on the couch! Thanks for picking me up! Where’s Kong?” Nellie’s new German friend, Andreas, told me that she had been such a joy all day and that she could come back anytime, which made me wonder if I was going to end up making this trip again. I will if Nellie overheard him.

I put Nellie in the back of my mom’s station wagon. Then, we found ourselves in an interesting predicament. The “road” I had driven up was one lane with a steep hill on one side and a sheer drop-off on the other. In their superior wisdom, the tree people had parked their trucks in a brilliant strategic formation that completely blocked me from the house’s turn-around area. To ask the men to move the trucks, would have meant yelling over the chainsaws to ask them to come down out of the tree, move the trucks, get back up in the tree, and, frankly, this adventure had already proved complicated enough. I decided to back down – literally.

Now, it wasn’t the easiest drive I’ve ever made, and there were some touch-and-go moments since wet leaves concealed much of the road, but I made it down the steep, curvy ½-mile course backward with dog, car and sanity intact. For the rest of the afternoon, Nellie occupied her usual position on the rug next to my chair, and I continued my highlighting.