Another chapter...

Another exciting chapter in The Adventures of Miracle Dog...

After returning home from working and then playing at The Doodle around 7pm, I noticed a dead lizard on the living room floor. I hate lizards-especially dead, droopy lizards. So, since my nephew is due to help me around the house tomorrow, I upturned an empty garbage can on it in the hopes that Christopher will dispose of it tomorrow. Next I head to the kitchen to feed all the critters and notice another dead lizard in the kitchen nook. Yuck! I cover him with a Solo cup. The animals are fed and Ginger has been taken out for a quick walk so I am now changing into pj's and pulling together dinner. Lo and behold there is lizard number three in the hallway. Now I am beginning to wonder where all the lizards are coming from. I think that since my FIL has just been here repairing our front door, maybe a few sneaked in past him while the door was off it's hinges. I do not give this another thought except-poor Christopher.
As of today, there is not a lot of furniture in the main part of the house since we are getting new carpet next week and I have been moving all our furniture out into the Florida room. Needless to say, the house is very empty. But the Florida room is overflowing and hard to get around out there, so I have been avoiding that room unless it is to add more stuff from the carpeted areas. All that to tell you that I didn't go into the Florida room until much later in the evening....
There is a cold that is making it's way around my friends and I am trying my darnedest to catch it. So I am not feeling too great and decide to take an Alka Seltzer Nighttime Flu tablet so I will be able to sleep tonight. After eating a quick supper, I head to my scrapbook/computer room to check FaceBook and Yahoo mail for any messages, pick up my knitting project, chug my meds and settle down to watch SNL. Usually by now all the girls are curled up in my bed waiting for me to join them. Since my meds are starting to kick in, I decide to head to bed only to discover that Ginger and Minnie Mae are not in the bed. Only the really good cat, Elphaba, is waiting on me. Curious, I walk through the main house calling out for Ginger and not finding her anywhere. Not on her floor pillows, not on the pile of dirty laundry, not on her blanket, not scrounging for food... Very curious. I walk out to the Florida room to check the last few spots and discover that the back door is standing wide open! In retrospect I guess I should have been worried WHY the backdoor was standing open, but my first and only thought was-GINGER!!?
I rushed out the back door in my pj's, no shoes calling out for her but not finding her in our back or front yard. Not in our neighbor's yard, not out by the lake...nowhere close by. (BTW-Minnie Mae is sitting by the front door waiting to be let in.) Yikes! Panic starts to rise as I run through all the options in my head. Call Charles. What good will that do, but I do it anyway. He reprimands me for leaving the gate open. Walk the streets? I try that first, going around our block and a bit further calling her name, stopping people and cars asking them to look out for a tan Chihuahua. I call our Courtesy Patrol officer and ask him to help me look and being the nice fellow that he is, he was over at my house in no time taking my information and driving around looking. After about 45 minutes of looking on foot I decide to drive around. I spend another 1 1/2 hours driving. I a very fuzzy-headed as the "night time" meds are really kicking in and I think I will have to take Charles' advice and head in to make up fliers to hang up tomorrow.
Prayer. I was doing a lot of praying. I was asking for quiet guidance. I knew that my brain was in panic mode and I was not able to think. Think of where she would go, what she would be sniffing out. What route she might take. I needed to have a quiet brain now and I could freak out later.
I thought I could power through my meds for about another hour and I came in the house, found our crank flashlight and hit the lake's edge behind our house. I walked along the water bumping into all kinds of nocturnal critters, but no Chihuahuas. I rounded a curve in the lake and saw an open field and figured if I started back to the house that would be just about all I could do tonight. I cut through the field and when I got to the sidewalk, I started walking very slow and shaking Ginger's treat container. This noise brought about 5 cats out to the street and were following me like the Pied Piper. They wanted those treats! I know that cats like these treats 'cause Tiny E begs for these whenever Ginger gets them for "good girl-potty". So even in the midst of my crisis, I open the can and gave each of the kitties a treat. This makes them follow me almost all the way back to my house. In fact, they stop following me just about one house away from our house. A car comes by and some of the cats come to my side of the street and some to the other. I am just standing in the street for a few more minutes, deciding if I have another hour left in me, when one of the cats on the other side of the street walks over to the run-off drain to investigate. Here is where the prayer for quiet guidance comes in-I watch that cat look into the drain opening, sniff the air a bit and then jump back as if startled by something below. Quiet guidance. I walk across the street and shine my light down the drain opening and there looking up at me is Ginger! She is standing in a hot mess of grungey gunk! I couldn't believe that I had found her! But, now I have to figure out how to get her out. This is a rain water run off that slopes off the street and it also has a man hole cover over the top. I try that and it is way too heavy for me to lift. So I call the Courtesy Patrol back and tell him that I found Ginger and that I needed help. Again, he was over in no time. He was able to get the man hole cover off, but he and I just stood at the top looking down with the aid of his flashlight to the bottom, both of us thinking that we would never make it down there. I decide to call 911 and they say it is a problem for Animal Control and supply me with their number. I get a recording and hang up frustrated and somehow knowing that it would be up to me to save her. I thought my neigh boor, who has a big work truck with tons of tools and whatnot would be able to help, so at 2am I am pounding on their door for help. While they are putting on clothes, I run to my car knowing that it is always full of crap and maybe something McGuiver-esque will appear. Sitting in my backseat is a step stool that I used the other day and never took out. I grabbed it, ran back to the drain and when it didn't fit, I collapsed it to make it down the hole and re-opened it inside. With flip flops and pj's on, I scrambled down into this filthy, slimy, stinky sewer pit. There were broken bottles, diapers, objects of unknown origins and one shivering Chihuahua at the bottom. I reached the bottom, stepped off the ladder, fumbled around until I got a-hold of Ginger's scruff and pulled! I was up the steps handing Ginger to my neighbor lady and pulling myself out of the sewer shaking and almost in tears! We all hugged, cleaned up the "rescue" equipment and walked back to our houses with happy faces. He asked me how she got outt and it was only then that I realized that my back door had been open. Now I am starting to wonder how it got to be open and how long it had been open. I think that with the number of lizards littering my floors that the door has been open all day. The gate was left open by me, and that is how Ginger got all the way out. There is nothing missing from my house and no one hiding in any closets, so I am going to let the open door remain a mystery.
Once back in the house the smell coming off the two of us was more than I could stand and before I could get out of my clothes I threw up. Let me tell you, it was very gross smelling!! Very gross!!! I got a bath then gave Ginger two baths and one Vallium. She will need the tranquilizer in the hopes that this episode won't trigger any seizures.
Right now "G" is wrapped in an afghan sitting on my lap as I reflect on a question I recently got in one of those "get to know your friends" emails: "Do you believe in the power of prayer?" All I can say about that is that tonight my exact payers were answered and thank the goodness of the universe for listening to my prayers and guiding me to Ginger.