As I was taking a shower, I thought I faintly heard the phone. Turned out that Kim was requesting a rescue mission after she and Charlie had become “lost” (my term) somewhere in a canyon in the mountains north of town. As we maintained communications while I drove through the fog and mist in the general direction, she suggested that she thought she could generally make her way to the valley beyond, perhaps intersecting with me somewhere around Mt. Glen Road. Her final call before I sighted them, however, warned that she was accompanied by a strange dog that had refused to abandon them. When I spotted them up a narrow side lane, I approached and as the passenger door was opened the alien beast bounded past Kim and Charlie and leaped inside the pickup cab atop me. We were unable to extract the animal. So we bundled in together, all of us, two humans, two dogs, and proceeded to drive — while wrestling with a large, strong dog that interfered with steering and shifting and even forward vision — a few miles around to the other side of the mountain where Kim had left her vehicle. Only when we all exited the pickup, did the animal do the same. Eventually, we were able to leave the stranger at his origin and head back home.
