Leaves of Death

Please forgive the rather macabre post title. It’s an allusion to our dog’s reaction to this time of year. More in a moment.

First, though, we need to come up with a new term to describe this time of year, climatologically speaking. It’s too early to be winter and it’s too cold to be fall (at least for this part of the country). We could call it “pre-winter,” but that’s awfully clinical. “The cold season” sounds too much like a Ny-Quil commercial. “Late fall” is technically accurate, but isn’t emotionally engaging. Abbye votes for “the season of death falling from above,” but that’s her private neurosis.

Whatever you call it, in my opinion Mother Nature got it just right this year. We had a hard freeze overnight, a killing freeze. That’s good.

There’s nothing more annoying than having the first cold snap of the season be a tentative freeze, one that merely maims. When the first freeze is hard, you can make decisions, and stick to them. The lawn mower can be mothballed, and you can make a firm date with the leaf blower/sucker for a week hence, when the deciduous trees will be bare. Whatever has been producing that horrid pollen that’s been triggering your allergies for the past month is satisfyingly dead or dying, and you’ll have some relief on that front for a while. And, although the jury is still out on this one, the bitter cold might just persuade the flocks of Sonoran ravens which find our oak trees to be such hospitable toilet facilities to seek warmer environs.

Yes, when the first freeze is a hard one, we homeowners have reason to rejoice. But our dog becomes a nervous wreck.

Have I mentioned that Abbye has tendencies of timidity? Well, to say that she’s timid is like saying that the Grand Canyon is a ditch. It’s accurate without being meaningful.

Our dog’s timidity is brought into full flower in the presence of tree-free leaves. In her tiny little mind, a leaf is nothing more than a Claymore, a Bouncing Betty, a MOAB; the lethalness varies only by delivery method. Leaves on the ground may explode with the least provocation. Leaves falling from trees are, simply, death from above. And windblown leaves are the worst, for you never know when and where they might strike.

As far as we know, Abbye has never been seriously injured in a leaf attack. But to her, every day that goes by without a fatal leaf incident is simply a day that brings her closer to one. And so, we enter the worst of all possible seasons for her, when leaves are dropping from trees like, well, leaves, and the winds are gusty, and a simple walk to the park and back is a night patrol on the Mekong Delta in 1967.

Think I’m exaggerating, do you? Well, just follow us at a distance some day. What you’ll see is as odd a dance as St. Vitus ever executed. The human half of the pair is tip-toeing around the fallen leaves, trying to avoid stirring them with a foot, as that is the cue for the canine half to spaz out. In the meantime, the canine half is bouncing around like a junebug on a string trying to dodge the windblown enemy (think Neo on the rooftop in the first Matrix movie).

Every now and then, you’ll hear a woeful yelp, as the dog-like creature’s leaf-avoidance circuitry fails her. This strange inter-species ballet would be hilarious were it not so darned serious.

Thus, it’s with mixed feelings that I greet the first real signs of winter. I’m happy that Nature has scored an effective surgical strike, but I’m not looking forward to the next week’s worth of walkies. And if you see a wild golden ball of fur whirling on the end of a leash, please don’t call Animal Control. Instead, would you happen to have Dr. Phil’s number handy…?