Erin go Dogh

A Colorful Tail Tale

Ha! Score one for my aging synapses: I actually remembered that I wanted to tell you about this on St. Patrick’s Day. (You may soon wish I hadn’t. If you’re easily grossed-out, stop reading now.)

A couple of years ago I had occasion to do props for a production of “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” an opera with which my family has had a long and intimate association, what with my grandfather having commissioned and produced it for television, and my mother having been Menotti’s assistant on the original production, and my father having been conductor/musical director for most of NBC’s performances and productions of the piece in subsequent years… but I digress, don’t I. So anyway! among the props I put together was of course King Kaspar’s three-drawered box, the third drawer filled – “oh, little boy! oh, little boy!” – with licorice. “Black sweet licorice, black sweet licorice!” You really do have to use licorice (or at least something singer-friendly and edible that looks like it) for this, because Kaspar and Amahl both have to eat it onstage. And it has to be in pretty small pieces, because Amahl at least has to sing again shortly after he’s eaten his. I had a biggish bag of the stuff, cheap and nasty and artificially-flavored and -colored, and even after replenishing the Box for rehearsals and performances there was plenty left over. And after load-out the whole shebang lay about, as used props are apt to do, in, um, kind of a pile of, um, stuff in a corner in my house, waiting for me to get around to sorting it all out and putting it all away. And in my exhausted state, did I happen to remember that the pile included something edible which ought to be attended to in timely fashion? I did not. I guess I should consider myself lucky it wasn’t something capable of serious spoilage and smellage.

At any rate, if I was blithely oblivious of the presence of food in that quarter, someone else wasn’t – someone inquisitive, with four paws and a highly sensitive nose.

Unbeknownst to me, that someone poked about in the pile, located the source of the tantalizing new scent, and unobtrusively disposed of it in a manner befitting his species and avocations.

And a day or so later I was startled, and at first terribly alarmed, to observe… how shall I put this? Well, once I figured out what had happened and recovered from both the great relief and the hysterical laughter, I distilled my new knowledge as follows:

If you introduce licorice into one end of a dog, what is extruded at the other end on the following day will be ENTIRELY appropriate to St. Patrick’s Day. It comes out, if you’ll pardon that phrase, in I kid you not the most vibrant and uniform shade of bright Kelly green I have EVER seen in my life.

(This makes a lot of sense in light of some things I’ve recently learned from Jennifer about color theory as applied to combining dyes for green yarns. So does the fact that Luke’s present St. P’s Day output has taken on a more dignified shade of olive drab, thanks to the black charcoal tartar-control biscuits that are doing such wonders for his dental hygiene of late.)

Now – aren’t you glad I didn’t tell you about it a day or two ahead of time? Admit it: have I not saved you from a dreadful unholy temptation?

And… aren’t you glad I don’t have pictures?

Note to Blue Stocking Beta Knitters

I think I’ve e-mailed all you intrepid souls who offered to leap straight into the breach, but in case I missed anyone, herewith my apologies for not sending the pattern out today. The things I said I needed to do to it last night after I got home? The doing them wouldn’t have been a big deal – but the getting home was. I got stranded at the wrong end of several miles of ice-drift, while the files I needed languished here at home base; and the ploughs didn’t come through these parts until mighty late. As it was, the drive back was about as scary as anything I’ve ever experienced. The output of this storm wasn’t all that deep, in the event – but while it lasted it was treacherous as all-get-out, or rather as all-stay-in. And speaking of staying in, it’s a good thing my back door opens inward, or staying in is eactly what I’d be doing today, the front door being solidly barricaded by a thick layer of ice. Digressing again. I may still end up staying in today because of the impassability of the driveway. Look for something from me tomorrow if I don’t – maybe sooner if I do.