Zipper’s Day Out
{ July 2nd, 2009 }
This morning, started like most mornings do these days.
Jon got up around 4 because he couldn’t sleep any longer. He let Zipper out and then put her back to bed. She had her first trip to vet yesterday, and was feeling kind of under the weather from her deworming medication and her rabies vaccine, and so she wasn’t much into playing.
I got up around 7 and let Zipper out again. She did her thing, came back inside, ate her breakfast, and curled up to go to sleep on her pile of “Zipper’s towels.”
Jon and I took turns getting ready for work, both emailing from the kitchen table and drinking coffee for a while—taming the mass of emails that pile up over night when all of colleagues, friends, and family are active—before 9, when we called a special hire and went to Good African Coffee, a restaurant that has finally caught on that if you give free access to relatively decent internet, you do a bang up business. And business we give them.
Anyway, at 9, we let Zipper out one more time before she was put into “Zipper’s house,” which used to be our front half-bath, that was never really used.
When we first brought her home, we gave her a house in her house—a cardboard box that one of Jon’s work computers came in. Although I think she really liked her cardboard box (which a few days into getting to know each, Jon and I turned on its side to make it more of a cave than a box), she proceeded to chew it up completely. We didn’t really mind, because it’s a box, and it’s hers, but it eventually became rather unusable and we pitched it. Anyway, long story short, there seems to be a shortage of crates in Kampala right now, so we’ve given Zipper reign of the whole half-bath, and she does pretty well.
Zipper is about 3 months old now, and so she spends all of her time when we’re not available to keep an eye on her in her house. She is pretty well housebroken these days, as long as we’re paying attention and do our part. Knock on wood, she also still finds “Zipper’s toys” more exciting than most of “Sarah and Jon’s toys.” Again, that’s when we’re keeping an eye on her.
All of that is to say, that today started out just as any other day.
At Good African Coffee, Jon and I both worked for the morning. He had had a lunch meeting planned there for 1, and I planned to have my lunch, and come home around 1 to let Zipper out, play with her a little and then get back to work. I ordered my lunch around 12 and didn’t end up actually arriving until 1:40 (somewhat unusual for lunch at Good African Coffee, but not so unusual in Kampala generally).
I ate my lunch—an “herbed seasonal vegetable sandwich,” which I’ve finally convinced them to make with a side of steamed vegetables rather than fries or fried potato wedges—and then I packed up to come home around 2. Normally I would have called one of our regular special hires who are safe, reliable, and cheap, but I didn’t have my phone with me, and so I picked up a special from outside the restaurant. After negotiating what should be a 5000 UGX ride from 10,000 UGX down to 7000 UGX, we were off.
Four minutes after leaving, we were waved off the road by a traffic woman. She talked to my driver and asked for his permit. He gave some paper to her, which isn’t usually what people pull out. She seemed only moderately satisfied. She walked around the front of the car and found that one of the headlights was broken. She shook her head. She walked around the other side of the car and checked out the insurance.
I could only hear a little of the conversation, because the radio was still blaring behind me, Ugandans tend to be much softer spoken than we loud Americans, whom I’m sure Ugandans must think yell all the time, and because it was a combination of English and Luganda. It seemed, though, that there was some issue with the permit, not that it was expired, but there was maybe some tax that hadn’t been paid. There was also the issue of the headlight.
My driver tried hard to convince the police officer to let him go and drop me and then return to clear whatever fines he had to pay. Not unreasonably, the police officer didn’t want him to do that. She proposed to drive with us to my house. The driver didn’t like that idea. They went back and forth for a while, and eventually she settled on filling in blank piece of paper with his name, age, vehicle number, and maybe a few other details, and gave him a warning that he’d better return immediately after dropping me, because if he didn’t, she’s have his car impounded. Done. And it only took 20 minutes.
Finally, I got home. When I walked in the house, I found the door to “Zipper’s house” open. And, not surprisingly, I did not find Zipper inside. Oh dear. Remember, we’re not really sure how well to trust her when we’re not watching.
As I was discovering the open door and putting my bag down, Zipper came and greeted me waggily. We went outside where she peed just a little bit (oooh, no good…), and pooped (well, that might be good…?), and then we went back inside to assess the damage.
Front of the house: Zipper finished her both of food that was nearly, but not quite, finished this morning. Seemed that nothing was chewed, and there didn’t seem to be any telltale puddles or piles. I then checked the kitchen, which also seemed to be okay. I could tell that Charmime, our housekeeper, had been here. Hmm, a clue?
Back of the house: Back of the house? Oh no. Although the front of the house is not completely puppy-proofed, there’s not too much that she can get into. The back of the house, though, is currently off-limits to our little four-legged one, and so has not been puppy-proofed. Hallway looks clear.
The room that was formerly our office remains fairly empty, as we’re not totally sure what we want to do with it, yet. In the mean time, Charmime has been doing the ironing there, and leaves the clothes in a pile on the floor. “Zipper’s blankets,” which proved to be really fun to destroy were in there, folded. However, when I got home, they were less folded, and one of “Zipper’s toys”—her favorite toy—was next to the blankets. Cute. Across the room, I spotted the toilet brush from the guest bath next to the clean towels, where Zipper had also been sitting. Gross. But the dog does like to sit on towels. I put the brush back in the guest bath. Otherwise, nothing seemed amiss.
On to our bedroom (again, normally all of these doors are closed, but Charmime had been here and so everything was open. Nothing grossly out of order in our bedroom. A few socks out of place, but not terrible chewed. Luckily, Zipper didn’t seem to find interesting my open suitcase that remains on the floor. Mostly it’s unpacked, but what remains are all of the various pills and lotions that I travel with that TSA seemed to have poured out of their bags on my last trip back. I need to reorganize it all, but I haven’t done it yet. So, that was, amazingly okay. I did find a chewed pack of Ventallin asthma pills that had been on the floor. I know that Jon had taken one of them, but I’m not sure he had taken two. Zipper may have gotten one. Not great, but probably not the end of the world for her.
Finally, I make into our bathroom. Yes, our bathroom got the worst of it. Zipper found a roll of toilet paper and shredded the outer layers. She did so, kindly, on a towel in front of the shower, though, so it wasn’t so terrible to clean up. She found a random pair of sunglasses, that I think must have been left here by a Couch Surfer or something, because they’re not familiar. The base to the toilet brush was in the middle of the floor, but the brush was nowhere to be found. There was some mystery liquid in a few places on the floor. I have to say, though, I couldn’t tell if it was pee or if was mop water, or if it was the liquid that pools at the base of the toilet brush (gross again!). I wiped it up, and still couldn’t really tell. The towel was also sort of damp. Maybe she peed, or maybe it was damp from my shower this morning. Also, a mystery that likely we won’t find an answer to. Stranger still was that there was an envelope on the towel that contains our lease to the house. Where did she find that?
And where was the toilet brush? Come to think of it, where had Zipper gotten off to while I was cleaning up the bathroom?
I left the bathroom on my way back into the bedroom. I passed through the little hallway that contains my closet, and I heard a little shuffling. I looked, and there was Zipper, inside the bottom cubby of my closet where I’ve been storing our “important documents that need to be kept, but don’t have a good home”—like the lease! I bent down, along with Zipper, I found the toilet brush! Zipper had been hanging out there during the day!
So, Zipper had a big day out. All and all, I think she did pretty well. Could have been a lot worse, that’s for sure. She’s now all tuckered out and has curled up on “Zipper’s towels” next to me to go to sleep.
How did she get out? Like the mystery water in the bathroom, it remains a mystery. Our best guess is that Charmime let her out. It’s possible, I suppose that we didn’t quite get the door closed all the way this morning, but that seems sort of unlikely. I suppose it’s also possible that she has magical opposable thumbs that she saves for just such occasions.
