Scokie and Snake

My friend Marci has a wonderful canine companion by the name of Scokie. Now, Scokie is a sweetheart – she is a collie-cross – and is my true and devoted friend, as long as I keep the pizza crusts and belly rubs coming. Of course, being a collie, she is also compulsively driven to do what sheepdogs do - which is to chase after and herd things that move.

Scokie lives in a rural area, where there is lots of wild life and places for them to live. It turns out that Scokie loves to chase after garter snakes in the back yard. She's been chasing them for years without success - for garter snakes are slim and fast, while Scokie is well, err (don't tell her I said this), rather well fed and consequently slow.

Still, the inevitable had to happen one day. Scokie and a garter snake met face to face. I won't take bets on who was the most surprised... There next ensued a sort of canine-reptile Mexican stand-off. The snake froze - so did Scokie. Snake couldn't move while Scokie stood and stared at it, and Scokie didn't have a clue what to do until Snake moved.

This scene continued for a few minutes. Finally, Scokie let go with a loud bark! Snake still didn't move, their eyes locked together. I guess nobody ever told Scokie that garter snakes are deaf. Finally, something distracted Scokie and she broke eye contact with Snake. It took a moment or two for this realization to make its way up to Snake's brain and then, in a flash, she made a break for it!

Once again the chase was on, and once again, bless her, Scokie just couldn't find the acceleration to catch up to Snake, who made it safely home to tell her tale of adventure to all those who couldn't listen.

My little story is to illustrate how we all have our pet ways of doing things in the world - and how we can feel frozen when confronted by a life-question to which we don't have a workable answer. Fortunately, we also have voices to ask questions with, and ears to hear the answers with, and whether we are fat or thin, move slow or fast, we can travel to the place that the answers to our questions have revealed to us.

Yet if we won't ask, aren't prepared to listen and won't chase after answers, I guess we are doomed to keep repeating the Mexican stand-off of having an unspoken question with the corresponding silent answer. And in either case, there is always fresh pizza to comfort or reward ourselves with.

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