A Weather DADT Policy

In other words, if you don’t ask about the weather, I’m not going to tell!

Instead, the weather is closeted today (ha!) and photographs are few and far between, I’m going to tell you a story about Or’ange (pronounced as if you were French).

Or’ange was a small, roly-poly kid who loved to play with his dog friends whenever they wen to the park to play fetch. When I say he was roly-poly, I literally mean completely round with absolutely no corners or edges on this guy. While that was one distinguishing feature, another was the blue streak in his otherwise orange hair.

Well, one day, while the dogs chased after Or’ange at the park, Monty picked him up by the back of his pants and carried him off. Monty meant no harm, he was just playing, but as Monty often does, he got distracted and dropped Or’ange along the way. When Monty returned to play with all of his other friends at the park, they noticed that Or’ange was no longer with him.

“Hey, Monty,” I asked, “Where’s Or’ange?”

“Huh?” was Monty’s enlightened response. Instantly, we all got worried and scattered to all four corners of the park look for Or’ange.

We called his name, we searched in the bushes, we looked down the hill and up the street. We looked in the most unusual places (up trees) and even created a grid pattern to search the area like they do on CSI. But no Or’ange.

Monty felt horrible and for days and days we walked through the park calling for Or’ange and retracing Monty’s steps.

When we were just about to give up hope, we walked the edges of the park one more time hopelessly whimpering Or’ange’s name. He must be cold and hungry and very scared, we all thought to ourselves when all of the sudden, out of nowhere, Or’ange came rolling down the hill!

“Or’ange, Or’ange,” we all yelled and raced to him. We hugged him again and again and finally asked, “What happened?”

“Well, I got stuck in a gutter. I’m so embarrassed. That’s never happened to me before, but there I was for what seemed like weeks stuck in the drain. I heard you all yelling for me, but every time I yelled back, my voice just carried down to the sewer system and not up to you. I was so scared and so worried that no one would find me that I had to do something.

“So the other day, when it rained, all the old leaves from autumn started moving up and down kind of waving at me. That’s when I got the idea. I could move back and forth, but I couldn’t get enough lift to push me out of the gutter. So these past few days and nights I worked tirelessly to build a ramp out of the gutter using the leaves.”

“That’s brilliant!” Monty exclaimed.

“Yes, I suppose it was, but man, I was desperate. Eventually, with enough rain and enough leaves, I made a perfect ramp out of the gutter and up on to the street. But the next part was the hardest of all. I had to roll super fast and launch myself up the ramp so my momentum carried me out into the street. I’ve been trying for days, but when I heard you all walk by again sounding so sad, I just knew I had to try one last time.”

“And it work!” I shouted.

“Yes,” said Or’ange, kind of proud of himself. “It worked and lucky for me, once onto the street, I could roll downhill to all of you.”

The friends embraced again and I got to carry Or’ange home where he rested with a huge smile on his face.

(Please note that all the photos are from today’s rainy activities! You can only keep things in the closest for so long! More photos from today’s wet activities below:)

Until tomorrow,

Rubin