An Expensive Gas Bill

$197.50 – for gas! No, not the kind that goes in El Presidente, and not the kind that my furnace can burn either. Let me back up, last week we did the Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet. Since I had to work and we had assigned the boys to just bring a covered dish, I suggested that we just cook a couple turkeys.  After all, is there anything easier to cook than turkeys? Plus they are pretty cheap for how much meat you get out of them.  Anyway, since I work at a pretty chill job, I’m well known for bringing in a crock-pot or roaster when I need to deliver a meal on my way home or take to an activity.  Unfortunately my co-workers don’t get to sample what ever they get to smell all day. So, the turkey got cooked at work, the dinner went off without a hitch, and after it was all said and done there were two turkey carcasses with quite a bit of meat left on them. 

Now- before I go any further, yes, I know I could boil them down and make turkey soup, yes, I know all the ways you can take left over turkey and use it in dishes – but to be perfectly honest no one at my house would eat it and mostly I didn’t want to.  And I wasn’t the only one, because the other sister who had made a turkey was wondering if it would be all right to go ahead and throw it in the church dumpster so it wouldn’t stink up her garbage cans. I of course had the brilliant idea that there is a whole pack of dogs that live on my street who would love the opportunity to eat turkey.  So I took both carcasses home and gave one to Marley on Thursday night and the other to my dog Tina on Friday morning before I left for work. Yeah, yeah I know – dogs aren’t supposed to eat cooked poultry bones, but these are ranch dogs, they eat everything and it wasn’t even the 10^th turkey carcass I had fed to Tina, but probably the 20^th. Friday night Tina was a little off, Saturday night she started throwing up a bit, Sunday she was really sick.

Great! After lecturing my sister last fall about the responsibilities of pet ownership I couldn’t just ignore the damage that I might have done. So bright and early on Monday I made an appointment with the vet. I had to lift her in and out of the backseat of my truck and then I explained to the vet about “a neighbor that had thrown a turkey carcass away and the dogs had tipped over the trash cans” (I only lie because I am really good at it, which is a curse). The vet took x-rays and determined that Tina had a very inflamed intestinal tract, but it looked like it was only gas.  Of course Tina started acting like she felt better as soon as I started writing the check.