August 12, 2002
DOWN HOME:
Well, at least it wasn't fleas
___For awhile there, I thought Betsy gave me a summertime gift I'd be itching to give back.
___Betsy runs around the backyard all day and gets hot and sweaty. She rolls around in the grass and crawls through the shrubs. Sometimes, she even digs around in the flower beds.
___And this summer, Betsy got fleas. At least we thought it was fleas. Betsy is our dog.
___She sleeps in her kennel in our room on my side of the bed. (Actually, I should say she spends thenight in her kennel. She's almost 11 years old, and she sleeps all over the place, just about anywhere she wants to.)
MARV KNOX
Editor
___Six days a week, Betsy and I get up first. Each morning, I open her door, bend down and pick her up and carry her like a football under my arm to the back door. She's three parts Yorkshire terrier and one part poodle, just about the size of a football, so she fits right there.
___A couple of weeks ago, Betsy kept waking me up all night. She was thump-thump-thumping as she scratched. Her right hind leg would come up behind her ear, and she'd scratch blue blazes for 10 or 15 seconds. Then she'd stop for a minute or two. Then she'd go at it again.
___The next morning, bleary eyed, I told Joanna, "I think Betsy's got fleas."
___But like a doofus, I'd already picked Betsy up like a football, tucked her under my right arm next to my waist, and carried her to the back door.
___That night, wide-awake with that exquisite pain that only comes from insect bites, I told Joanna, "I think I've got fleas."
___The next night, after Betsy had received a flea treatment, she slept soundly. But if I could've raised my right hind leg far enough, I would've thump-thump-thumped the blue blazes out of whatever was itching me.
___The next day, we noticed that a few of the red welts looked like red lines, like something was crawling under my skin.
___"Daddy, I think you've got chiggers," said Lindsay, our 18-year-old who has worked part time in Meadows Pharmacy the past year and now is our resident medical expert.
___In an impromptu family forum, I got the best medical advice you can get if you don't run the opposite direction like blue blazes. Molly basically wanted to dip me in fingernail polish to suffocate the fire-breathing bugs.
___We decided Lindsay should ask Cindy, one of the pharmacists, what to do. She came home with some stuff that smells like medicine but spreads like fingernail polish.
___It works, too. And I feel better.
___Some people say uncomfortable or painful situations prompt people to ask ultimate questions. While I'm not casting doubt upon divine providence, I do wonder why God decided to create chiggers, wasps and fire ants.
___And if Betsy were a theologian and not a dog, I'm sure she'd ask about fleas.
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