Happy Hippos

Imagine the following scene. Hungry dogs circling the meat wagon 30 min. early then doing their very best to wait patiently. Door to the meat wagon opens; driver disappears inside and returns with FULL bowls. Mouths salivate. Giant puppy leaps for joy while older man cowers beside her not fully satisfied with his new position in the hierarchy. While the driver sweet talks older one, the leaping nose knocks a full bowl. Pieces of large breed puppy chow fly. Older one goes bananas. He just won the lottery. Chaos ensues. The driver rushes frantically to scoop up the pieces before older man eats it all. A few stern corrections to the nape and some snarling later, the puppy kibble ends up in the right mouth.

It all reminded me of this game I used to play as kid. I think it was called Happy Hippos or something like that. It involved snapping plastic hippo mouths at little marbles in the middle of a tray to scoop them up before they rolled into the trap. I don't know why they called it Happy Hippos, perhaps the hippos were starving to death and eating marbles made them feel good. Besides remembering that this was an insanely fun game, I also remember certain parental units of the female persuasion thinking this game ought to be called Horrible Hippos because it made an awful racket. Now that I think of it, I believe the real name of this game was Hungry Hippos. I still like the name Happy Hippos. Anybody who gets to inhale food that fast has got to be happy!

Despite some worry about Katy's stitches coming apart last night and having to go to the vet again yesterday for antibiotic pills and cream, she is doing fine. She wolfed her food down this morning and last night plus is feeling playful this morning. And, she's starting to boss Max around again. He got a two day quasi-reprieve. I say quasi because the only thing she let him do was drink water when he wanted to. She was probably too tired to get up just to tell him to stop. This morning she asserted herself at the door. She *had* to enter before he did.