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Friday, September 7, 2012

Burgie The Carpet King



Regular readers of this blog are familiar with my thwarted childhood quest for a dog. As a kid I was never permitted to have pets unless they were small enough to flush down the toilet once I’d loved them to death, but I was chummy with most of the neighborhood canines.


One dog that left his mark on my childhood was Burgie the Carpet King. Burgie was a bug-eyed bulldog with a head shaped like a jack-o-lantern. He belonged to the Holloways across the street. Burgie once had a close encounter with that other self-proclaimed monarch of the neighborhood, my mother—no lover of pets. The Holloways were headed to Texas to visit relatives and I was paid a dollar a day to check on Burgie in their backyard, sweep out his dog house, clean up the poop and feed him. One morning I finished my duties and left without properly latching the side gate. I was in a hurry; a few of us were heading to nearby Cabrillo Creek to look for an elusive albino tadpole that had been spotted.


Once I was out of sight, Burgie made a break for it.


He wandered the neighborhood for a few hours and then collapsed in the center of the street.


His timing was unfortunate; at that very moment a city dogcatcher happened to be cruising through our neighborhood. The stupid dog didn’t bother to budge from his spot in the middle of the road, much less run away.


From our front window, my mother witnessed the dogcatcher approaching Burgie. In a rare gesture of noblesse, she rescued the Holloway’s pooch and brought him home. I wasn’t there at the time but it’s easy to imagine him entering our house and waddling into the living room. I was told he rewarded my mother for rescuing him with an unpardonable offense; he raised a nonchalant eyebrow at my mother’s highbrow antiques, crouched into his best humping position and proceeded to masturbate on our living room rug. It’s also easy to imagine my mother glaring down at the Carpet King and declaring in a tone associated with Queen Victoria, “We are not amused!”


Mother wouldn’t deign to lower herself by returning Burgie to his backyard, and waited for me to come home and do it. After all, I was being paid and she wanted to point out just what a miserable job I was doing. For the rest of the afternoon, Burgie the Carpet King abused our rug with the enthusiasm of a sailor on shore leave.


My mother confiscated the money the Holloways paid me for watching Burgie and used it to have the living room rug professionally cleaned. But long after Burgie’s infatuation with our living room rug, you had only to look closely to see the spots where The Carpet King left his royal mark.



Note:

Thanks to the guys at Dude Write for honoring me this week with three awards: two for my post Tight Asses and one for my first attempt at flash fiction, Stupid Men and the Sea. Although Dude Write features writing with a male slant, their posts are sure to entertain everyone. I encourage you to check out this great website.



34 comments:

  1. Congratulations ! You should win all the awards going - your posts are always wonderful stories and so readable.

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  2. So you couldn't sell your mom on Burgie's actions being a term of endearment, huh?

    Seriously, that's one reason I prefer female dogs. ;)

    S

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  3. Congrats on the awards. Much deserved.

    As a dog lover I was worried that your story was going to say that your mom watched him get hauled off to doggy jail. Kudos to her that even with her "less than fond of pets" sensibilities that she rescued the randy little pooch. Actually I applaud her handling of the situation. I might have been more inclined to get rid of the rug and use some of your college fund to buy a new one.

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  4. Ha!!! Burgie sounds like quite the pooch. He certainly made himself at home~

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  5. Hey, I've seen that bulldog picture somewhere before! http://grumpybulldog.blogspot.com/2012/03/who-wants-to-write-my-blog-for-me.html

    I follow the bulldog mascots of Butler University on Twitter and Facebook but there's never any mention of them masturbating on the carpet. Maybe because they both got fixed.

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  6. Burgie sounds like the kind of dog i would end up rescuing.

    You deserve those awards.

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  7. You have a wonderful way of sharing a story through a unique POV that engages this readers attention.

    How old were you when Burgie was shagging rugs all over the neighbourhood? No wonder he flopped in the middle of the road... he was spent. lol

    Congrats on receiving your 'Man Card'.

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  8. I'm telling you I just love your mom. You can tell her I said so too. She's got spunk.

    Congratulations on all your awards too. Very well deserved.

    Have a terrific day and weekend. :)

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  9. Oh gaaaaaaah! I love dogs anyway, in spite of the stuff they do.

    I bet you always latch gates really well these days.

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  10. I've always been partial to cats, myself. One of the reasons is that they take care of themselves in ways that dogs don't. They clean up their own poop, if let outside (which all of mine have been.) You don't have to put a leash on them and walk them. If you leave food out for them, they'll only eat what they need instead of wolfing down all of it and becoming either sick or dead. And they catch vermin (which some dogs do, but not as efficiently as cats.) Being a lazy sot, cats always made more sense to me.

    Having said that, though, I sure would have loved to have seen your mom's face when Burgie was making sweet love to the rug.

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  11. Pretty gross, Stephen. Think that's why I don't have a dog...when they do that licking thing and then try to come into your face for a kiss...not so much..

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  12. OMG! That's hysterical! I needed a good laugh today. Thanks. Mindy

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  13. your poor mom with the humpy dog! lol!

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  14. Dogs..... Great story, did you find the albino tadpole? :)

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  15. Congrats on the awards, so well deserved! My Sophie would have engaged your Burgie in all kinds of fun games that didn't include spotting carpets...and no, she's fixed so I'm not referring to THAT kind of shenanigans.

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  16. Just another reason we no longer have any house pets!

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  17. Okay--I'll be chuckling over this one for a while. We used to have a highly excitable little chihuahua dog wander over into our yard on occasion who was too small to actually hump our big dogs but he'd try anything small enough and if there was nothing around his imagination and the air was good enough for him. We called him Humper. He only came around for a couple months. Always wondered what happened to Humper.

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  18. I'm laughing. That's my kinda dog. I can't believe your mom rescued him, and I can't believe she didn't hit him over the head with a shovel when he humped the rug. Ah, well. Such is life. Congratulations on becoming a man.

    Love,
    Janie

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  19. oh lordy ....hee hee I think I prefer cats!! Our dogs always embarassed me by dragging their behinds over the rugs...bleahhh. Did you ever have a dog when you were a child? Or did you have to wait for your own home?

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  20. oh lordy, that's just foul. i wonder what objects burgie defiled regularly in his own home...wait, scratch that. i don't really want to know.

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  21. I'm sure many people could write the same story where the kid had a job that wasn't done and the parent rescued them. I'm sure no one paid as big a price as your mother. No wonder she didn't love pets.Good story.

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  22. Sounds like Mom came through for you, and Burgie-- well you know that you just have to love a good dog, Excellent story Stephen.

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  23. Congrats on all the awards! I am just now able to catch up on my favorite blogs and this post delivered! Too funny - dog/carpet amore...what?!

    Did you ever get a dog?

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  24. Congratulations on the awards!

    I'm more of a cat person myself, and they've always been fixed, so it's possible that I might have had the same horrified look on my face that I picture you mother having.

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  25. Well, better for Burgie to love the rug than your mom's leg. I had a toy poodle who loved a fluffy blue slipper. Thankfully, it was my sister's, not mine.

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  26. You well deserve the awards.

    I never had a good outcome when I took care of neighbors' pets. They always found a way to make mischief or die when I was in charge.

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  27. I like dogs, and would love to have one.
    Congrats for awards.

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  28. Congrats on the awards!

    I'm not into dogs or any pet for that matter. But I do enjoy watching them especially when they're in any of their wacky moods.

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  29. LOL. Hilarious. But you left me in suspense: did you ever get to see the elusive albino tadpole? ;)

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  30. Four feet, or two, men are endlessly entertaining. Thanks for the chuckle, I'm off to see what silly nonsense hides out at Dude Write.

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  31. Humping the rug! I suppose it's marginally less anti-social than humping your leg?

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  32. Marvelous! What adventures kids have with dogs.

    I am thrilled to see your writing getting the recognition it so richly deserves.

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  33. I can imagine how traumatized your poor mother was by The Carpet King--inexcusable reason for stain on the carpet indeed.

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  34. I always had cats when I was young. They are not fun as dogs :D

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