"I ate no such thing."

While the end of Spring is fading like the color in an old photograph, the beginning of Summer has already quietly made its entrance with fireflies and bunnies. Olive races around the yard like a little brown ambulance, chasing, and I suppose catching some fireflies. She focuses on her winged-beetle target and then leaps up to snatch them out of the air. Can you imagine having the freedom to fly and then being devoured by another living creature in mid-flight? She also joyfully chases moths, butterflies and bunnies. In an example of being paralyzed by complex decision-making, last week Olive approached four bunnies seated on the front lawn like Congressmen debating the merits of yesterday’s lunch. In an instant, all four bunnies scattered in four different directions. I thought Olive’s head was going to explode. All she could do now was frantically sniff their tracks hoping that there might be a meaty trinket at the end of each trail. There seems to be an abundance of these small brown and white cotton-tailed rodents this year. Possibly because my lawn does not look like a lawn, but a clover-and-weed farm that supplies the rabbit kingdom throughout the world. This year is also the year of the giant toadstool forest. Each heavy rain produces a crop of an exotic variety of toadstools; some the kind that Lewis. G. Carroll must have eaten before penning the LSD-fantasy, “Alice in Wonderland.” I run around harvesting these magic buttons whenever they sprout up so Olive can’t eat them and be magically transported to some imaginary world which costs me thousands of non-imaginary dollars to rescue her from. I am always startled by how fast these botanical ornaments grow. At night, there is nothing there and by the next morning, there is a fungal skyscraper the size of the Chrysler Building. I shouldn’t worry too much though. Olive much prefers nibbling on the pockets of glazed black marbles that the deer and bunnies leave behind after dining on our lawn like it’s an agricultural drive-though. “THAT IS SO DISGUSTING OLIVE. DON’T COME NEAR ME WITH THAT MOUTH UNTIL AT LEAST AUGUST.” And the funny thing is, as she’s eating this biological waste, she grimaces like she’s just discovered that they are infinitely more sour than she expected. But of course, this doesn’t stop her. I guess it’s an acquired taste. Perhaps it is the caviar of the canine world.