Social distancing can be difficult, especially when you’re an overly friendly Golden Retriever like Asa. However, I never realized what extremes Asa would go through to make new friends, while missing his old ones. It all began earlier this summer when Asa rolled on an anthill in an attempt to invite his little friends inside to play. However, Asa got caught and his antsy antics were soon stopped. Or so we thought.
Not to be deterred, Asa then tried to befriend a spider who already lived in our home. Now this wasn’t just any spider. This spider had my utmost respect due to our shared fondness for being on a schedule. For weeks every evening she would emerge from under our TV stand, run across the living room rug, slow down to make a huge sauntering circle around the kitchen, and then scurry to return under the TV stand by our bedtime. Alas, Asa squished our punctual roommate while attempting to dance with her.
After the hives got attacked, Asa graciously opened our home to a Honey Bee. It soon became apparent though that his buzzy friend missed her family and needed to be released back into the wild. Although I do admit that turning our house into a giant hive does sound like a good idea. Raccoons never could knock our whole house over! I wonder if I could persuade Mom and Dad to allow my Honey Bees to all move in here? But I digress…
Next Asa once again turned his attention towards his little ant friends. I have to hand it to him, this time he used the clever excuse that ants are like mini-roombas and could pick up the tiny crumbs he and I miss. This was during the time when Mom was on strict bedrest, and Dad, who was in charge of cleaning, liked Asa’s idea. However, once Mom came downstairs and saw the tiny industrious housekeepers, she put a stop to Asa’s plan.
This brings us to this week, when Asa made yet another attempt at sneaking a new friend inside to play. We had just returned from a walk with Dad, and Asa was acting particularly odd, even by Asa’s standards. Rather than run and play in the backyard, he went directly to the backdoor and sat down. He looked so mischievous that Dad went over to take a closer look and noticed something moving in Asa’s fur. He was trying to smuggle a cricket into the house!
Dad freed the cricket who immediately made his escape. Although personally, I think he should have let Asa keep him. If this cricket was anything like the one who befriended Pinocchio, I could have saved myself a lot of work by having Jiminy Cricket keep Asa out of trouble!
