Murphy's Christmas Pie

T'was the day before Christmas, and all through my car, my cell phone was ringing, I hadn't gone far.

I got the angry phone call from my dear mother just five minutes after leaving Murphy at my mother's house while I was out shopping.

Five minutes. I wasn't even two miles away yet.

Apparently, despite repeated warnings about Murphy's fondness for counter surfing, my mother left two freshly-baked pies on the kitchen counter and went into the other room, leaving dog and pastries unattended. The pies had been meant for a pre-Christmas dinner with our family and that of Aaron of The Shekel.

(Dinner memorialized on his blog here.)

But once the coast was clear, Murphy chose to sample the lemon meringue pie, no doubt planning to have the chocolate pie for dessert. The first indication my mother had that she'd screwed up was the sound of the pie plate hitting the kitchen floor upside down, spattering what pie that Murphy had not already consummed all over the kitchen. The angry phone call came moments later.

I made it a point to try to stay away until I was sure that the chef had cooled off. However, due to the fact that she had to clean the entire kitchen floor again and then head out to the jam-packed grocery store to get new pie ingredients before setting out to mmake a brand new pie pretty much ensured that she stayed miffed at her "Grand-dog" for quite some time. It also didn't help that everyone that she relayed this story to thought that it was funny.

Of course my mother is not totally without blame here. Murphy is my fourth dog, current standard-bearer of an unbroken line of dogs going well back into the 1980s, and each one of the other dogs has at one time or another grabbed something delicious that was cooling on a counter at her house. In short, this has happened before and she kinda should have been expecting that, especially after I'd specifically warned her several times that he does this. I also just found out this morning that she'd teased him a bit and put some pie filling on his nose while making the pie, so it's not as if he just decided out of the blue to taste-test the pie--she'd already shown him just how good it tasted before leaving him alone in the room with it. But my mom is as trusting as my dogs are untrustworthy with food on counters, so while I did my best to sympathize with her over the loss of the pie, I can't help but snicker when I'm out of sight and reach of her broom.

Merry Christmas, y'all!