Extra Green Elephant Drivers and Diving Submarines

Living in a foreign country entails a lot of extra work that is fun in the way solving puzzles is fun. Part of the charm of living abroad is figuring out who has what you want or need, then finding out  where that who is and how to get there . You don't really grasp how much you know about your own culture and society until you have lived abroad: in your home country you understand who to call, who to talk to, what to ask for and how to ask for it, and where to go almost without thinking, and you don't realize that knowledge is practically in your DNA. It is endlessly interesting to see the different ways other countries and cultures organize themselves and the different approaches they take to getting things done.  Well... charming and interesting, that is, until you have an emergency and then it becomes something else.

We returned to Suisse Romande from forced exile in the latter part of the winter to very grey and very cold weather on a Thursday afternoon. That evening as I turned all of the furnace functions back on I noticed that the fuel level was down very, very close to zero, when full is around 3,500 liters. My hair stood on end at the prospect of running out of fuel in the middle of February - that would be really bad.
The next morning I dug through the old bills and figured out who the fuel company was and called them and, reading from the old receipt,  asked for an emergency delivery of mazout extra-vert.  Mazout extra-green? I wondered silently to myself. Wasn't a mazout an elephant driver??  I know, I know.  Mazout, mahout... whatever.  If George Bush can disremember neucular stuff and have wings that take dream, and Sarah Palin can  refudiate history and have Paul Revere ringing jingle bells that warn the British they weren't taking away our guns, then I can have extra-green elephant driving Mazouts in my world.

After various calls back and forth I was informed that, unfortunately, there was no way for delivery that day and I would have to wait until Monday. I looked at the fuel gauge hovering around 200 hundred liters and made the mental calculations. 3,000 liters a year - high end maybe 10 or 15 liters a day. It should last until Monday. Ok, I capitulated. Monday morning at 8 a.m. they would deliver fuel. I went about the house unpacking and doing laundry and such and then, early in the afternoon, I noticed an unusual silence to the house. I turned on the hot water in the kitchen and ran it for a few minutes and it was barely warm. I went into the furnace room and looked at the furnace and hit the reset buttons. It made some sparking and chugging noises and then went silent and refused to restart. It was Friday afternoon and we were out of fuel.

I called the fuel company back and pleaded for an emergency delivery which, I was informed again, was quite impossible. Now, I was also informed, I would need a technician to come out and restart the furnace after the fuel delivery, as it wouldn't just start up like nothing had happened. "Couldn't I come to the depot and pick up some fuel myself" I queried.  No, that was not possible either, I was (sympathetically) informed.  The woman there did offer some help, however:  I could go to the gas station and buy some deisel and put that in the cistern, which people sometimes did in an emergency, and that should hold us through until Monday.  "Really?" I asked, disbelieving. Yes, I was informed. Ask the people at the gas station and they will know exactly what fuel you need. Tell them it is for your furnace cistern. Hmmm. First I had to find the fuel cistern.

I only had a few hours before it was dark so I bolted outside to look for the cistern and figure out how to put fuel in it. After 15 minutes of frantic searching I found the iron manhole like cover beneath a carpet of leaves, under a 4 foot high steel beam overhang, and tried to open it with my bare hands. The thing was a meter in diameter and must have weighed 100 kilos and I couldn't even budge the it. What to do? What to do? Time was getting late!! I rummaged around in the utility shed and found a neolithic pick ax with a 2 foot spike on it and hustled back to the cistern and was able to pry up the lid and slide it a few feet sideways and expose the filling nozzle. Success!!

I stood up abruptly and smashed my head directly into the overhanging steel I beam and staggered around in the leaves like a drunken sailor before falling on my knees in a semi conscious daze. I put my hand on my head and felt a 3 inch long furrow which rapidly turned into a 3 inch long lump which I tried to keep squished down. After a minute or two of true stupidness I realized I'd better ice it and got a plastic ice pack out of the freezer and put it on my head as I walked around and tried to regain my senses. I pressed it hard on my head to keep the swelling down and after a while pulled it off to see how the wound felt. The blue plastic block was covered in scarlet and I felt blood dripping down my forehead. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck and wanted to go lie down, but the vision of us huddled in the dark house with frosted breath as the water pipes froze and burst kept me on my feet and moving. I climbed in the car with the ice pack pressed to my head and unsteadily headed off to the nearby town where the gas station was.

At the gas station I hurried in and explained what had happened and what I had been told by the fuel company. Oh yes, the woman nodded. She discretely eyed my head matted with wet blood and said nothing. Yes she knew people who had used deisel in their cistern. But first, she informed me, I needed to go buy some gas cans to put them in. Following her precise and almost incomprehensible directions (I was really having trouble thinking and understanding people as a result of my head mash) I tore off in the general direction she had pointed and eventually found a giant Migros everything store and got the gas cans. With darkness falling I arrived back at the house with 40 litres of deisel to dump in the ground. It didn't seem like nearly enough to make a difference, but I had been told it would do the trick.  I needed giant pliers to open the fill pipe and then dumped in the fuel and after resealing the fill pipe I stood up, very carefully this time. I headed into the furnace room to fire up the unit.

As I came into the furnace hallway a buzzer was pulsing at about 130 decibels like the submarines in the old World War II movies as the destroyers are bearing down on them dropping depth charges: aaahooogah! aaahooogah! Dive! Dive! The din in the furnace room itself prevented rational chains of thought. The red light on the fuel unit was flashing a warning that the vacuum seal to the cistern had been broken. Luckily I had been through this before: I turned on the vacuum switch and mercifully, the buzzer quit. How had I been through this before, you may be asking? Ah yes. That would be when Tasha, in a bout of lightning and thunderstorm induced panic, had chewed through the bundle of vacuum and venting tubing in order to escape out the cat door and into the thunderstorm, and had set of the vacuum breaker alarms and an 18 hour cycle of phoning and repair services. Useful experience, that was.

So, an hour and a half later after the vacuum had been re-established I went to the furnace and hit the restart button. There was some encouraging whirring and machinery sounds, a fan started, the sparking mechanism clearly fired, and there was a large poofing and popping sound as an enormous black cloud of smoke puffed out of the furnace and filled the room with the smell of diesel.

I hate it when that happens.

We survived the weekend huddled around the upstairs fireplace in multiple layers of clothing and drank lots of wine.  By Sunday night the house was down to about 45 degrees but no water pipes had frozen, and we washed our faces by heating teakettlefuls of water and pouring them into the bathroom sink. The fuel delivery came right at 8 a.m. as scheduled, then I waited for the technician to come and restart the furnace.

He showed up about 10:30 with tools and electronic diagnostics and did various preparations before starting the furnace. I mentioned to him that the fuel had run out even though the gauge indicated a few hundred liters left. "They always run out before they hit empty," he told me. "That's just the way those gauges work." He hit the restart button and the same black smoke puff appeared for him and he looked slightly bemused. He informed me the sparking unit was fouled and he had to replace it, which he did. He pulled the old unit out and gave it a sniff, and shook his head. "Smell that!" he instructed me. I dutifully gave it a sniff. "It smells like diesel," he said matter-of-factly. I furrowed my brows and nodded in agreement, saying nothing. "That is not extra green elephant driver," he stated. He looked at me knowingly. "I think the fuel company is delivering poor quality fuel," he told me. "Your house is the fourth or fifth one I have serviced in the last two weeks with diesel smelling fouling in the fuel!" He shook his head in mild disgust.

"Imagine that!" I said shaking my head in accord with his. "Strange!"

Haunts for Lovers

Europe is romantic, and Suisse Romande is no exception. The summer months of warm evenings  and late dinners at outdoor village bistros and side street cafes make for magical nights that stretch out for hours as friends and couples chat and tell stories and remember poignant moments that began romances or defined forever the history of who they were and how they understood each other. When we talk to old couples they almost invariably love to remember to us small events in their past that made clear who they truly were, and who they would be with each other, and in telling us their stories you can see them fall in love again a little bit as they go back into that moment in time. Sometimes as they talk they will hold hands lightly or touch the other's arm or shoulder unconsciously. Of course sometimes these old couples begin reciting a litany of ancient gripes they have against one another in ever increasing volume and we bail out as fast as we can as we feign an inability to understand to French.

A few weeks ago as we spent the afternoon in Geneva's old city browsing art galleries and bookstores, I saw couples here and there, clearly caught in the spell of romance. Strolling along arm in arm, kissing in shop doorways, lounging in the small green parks that are scattered throughout the city, sitting at a cafe table drinking coffees and talking about nothing in particular. And as the spell of romance caught them, they wove a larger spell for others to be drawn into. Couples in love bring a warmth to the world around them, sometimes in the most surprising ways.

I read recently that Geneva and its suburbs are composed of something like forty percent ex-pats, most of whom are here for  six month to two year stays. Many of our friends, like us, live in rental houses with a mix of a little rental furniture and a lot of furniture and household goods purchased at.... Ikea. On a recent visit to our friends for dinner, on the way to the patio dining area, they waltzed us past the rest of the house with a dismissive wave saying "There's nothing to see here - everything is from Ikea."

Ikea (pronounced here as "ee Kay uh") is about a half an hour away from Geneva just off the freeway, and it is always packed. You overhear every language - German, Spanish, Arabic - you name it, and see people from every corner of the world. The effect can be surreal as you walk deeper and deeper into the bowels of this super store and hear an incomprehensible babble of mixed tongues murmuring, chatting and debating. At some point you can feel a sense of panic as you realize you've hiked for several minutes into the store and there is no apparent way out, only more sub chambers leading you seemingly deeper into the building. This is where I found myself recently when I discovered something else about the store: here, deep inside Ikea, most of the couples are young Swiss French and French, and amongst them the spell of romance is woven.

Everywhere you look there are young couples holding hands, arm in arm, or arms around each other as they stroll the showrooms, working through their lists or earnestly discussing in quiet voices the future they hope for and the pieces of the life they are building with each other. You see the hope in their eyes, the quiet, subtle thrill, as they discuss and choose the bed they will share, the crib that their child will sleep in, the dining table where they will sit together and discuss the moments of their life and invent dreams that will become their future. You look at the way they stand and talk with each other and see not what we think of as traditional romance, but the other romance - the romance of creating a life together. There is something gentle and sacred about these couples, some of them pushing strollers, some with small children in tow, most often just the two of them.

This is where love is truly made, not happily stumbled upon - In the most modest of beginnings, with little money and great hope and an inspiration to make a life together. This is about the journey forward into time with nothing to see you through other than a commitment to create something new and the excitement at discovering who you and the one you love will become. While images of love are magical and the images of lovers in love are everywhere, here the romance is all but hidden, yet  palpable. Who would have imagined? Ikea is for lovers.

Naughty, Naughty! Eating in the land of sausage and duck fat.

You eat things over here you would never even consider putting in your mouth back in the U.S.  Take, for instance, saucisson a l'ail - garlic sausage.  It has all the pork fat and probably ten times the garlic of anything that ever crossed your lips or your imagination and, good God, it is scrumptious.

As I write these words I have a little platter of goodies to push me along. The chili pepper and garlic olives I bought at the open air market across the border in Divonne a few days ago have bee stung my lips into  puffy, chubby senselessness and my tongue looks and feels like a kiwi fruit, but I don't really mind since I'm quaffing an ice cold Tavel Rose (berry flavored and suffused with hints of roses, lemon and fresh cut grasses - so delicious!),  I don't have to try to talk, and no one can see me anyway. And the garlic sausage! There is so much garlic in it that the force of the flavor is simply intoxicating. Olives, sausage, rose... add in some slices of eggshell crisp on the outside and silky velvet chewiness on the inside, still warm from the bakery, french baguette and you have a stupefyingly delicious melange of eating going on.

Just the other night at a dinner we were goaded on by our European friends into eating the sauteed in garlic and truffles engorged liver of a poor little force fed duck. The famous here, and infamous in the U.S., foie gras. I will grudgingly concede that that duck, perhaps, did not suffer and die in vain. On odd occasions I catch myself licking my lips and contemplating that satiny buttery explosion of flavor one more time. How did I arrive at this place? I can only fall back on that age old defense - "the devil made me do it!"

And the truffles!... oh dear. We had some potato, sausage and cheese tartiflette (baked bubbling casserole) from the haute savoie that was laced with shallots and covered with shaved truffles, and with the first bite I was transported back to some time in my past when I was two or three years old. I looked around cautiously at other people at the table because I instinctively knew that this was really... naughty! To me truffles taste kind of dirty - as in morally wrong. They are suffused with a hint of nasty dirty that takes up where the stinky cheeses leave off. The flavor comes from somewhere over in the forbidden zone and leaves you with an itch you want to scratch again. I had an overwhelming sense of hedonistic pleasure, and the fearful guilt that this was going to get me in really, really big trouble. I suppose my cardiovascular system was screaming at me but I couldn't really hear it over the animated conversation all around and the gurgling of the wine as our glasses were re-filled.

And for dessert?  Fifty to sixty percent butterfat cheeses, creme brule that is little more than cream, eggs and sugar, or chocolate mousse that is little more than.... cream, eggs, and sugar - and chocolate!

As I contemplate another one of these dinners I already have no willpower to resist. I know I'm going to do the whole thing again with only the slightest encouragement. Am I a bad person?  NO!  It can't be!

Ok. Maybe the devil really did make me do it.

The Cow-Dog days of Summer

 `

Summer has crept into Suisse Romande in the last few weeks arriving on the heels of several days of chilly wind and rain coming late in June. Suddenly we are baking in a steamy souffle of rolling afternoon heat filled with flurries of tiny bugs, rough perfumes of farmland crops and baking woodland forests, and the sounds of neighbors splashing in their pools and watering their lawns and flowerbeds in the late afternoons and into the darkness of the very late nights we keep here. It gets dark around 10:30 and that is when the evening coolness breathes life into the villages and street side cafes and bistros.  Man is it hot.

"Switzerland" usually conjures up visions of the snow covered Matterhorn and the Riccola alpine horn players with snow capped alps in the background, but in summer Suisse Romande can be roasting. The temperatures have been in the high eighties the last few weeks, touching ninety in the shade, and the humidity is sticky and unremitting. The afternoons put everyone into a torpor. Yesterday afternoon as I drove through a small farming village nearby I came across several small herds of cattle huddled in the shade, ears flattened down, eyes closed, unmoving. They looked completely gassed. At our house the cats and dogs lay in the coolest part of the house panting faintly. A few days ago I went  out and bought an air conditioner for our bedroom in hopes that we could sleep at night.

Although it was the size of a large mini fridge and had an instruction booklet written in fourteen languages it turned out to be a pathetic machine. It blew an anemic stream of tepid air up towards the ceiling and the exhaust, which I vented out the window, felt like the same temperature as the air blowing into our room. Hours after I had turned it on the room felt exactly the same as it had before. The next day I went out and bought an old fashioned fan and we found that much more to our liking as we turned it on us at full power all night and kept the air in the room moving. Even the dogs came up and slept  where the fan could blow on them.

Changes in the farmland have suddenly become obvious. The fields of colza have gone caramel colored and the wheat fields are the yellow color of straw with a pale under wash of dark green. Corn fields that were calf high seemingly for weeks are suddenly chest and head high and are visibly growing inches each day. The sunflower fields are just opening into yellow, and the dark green plants are growing thick and burly. The upshot of all this is that the markets are overflowing with gorgeous produce from the surrounding areas.

The apricots and nectarines are dark colored and dead ripe when you buy them in the markets. 

They last one day in the fridge, so its best to eat them the same day you buy them. Having lived on the green picked industrial fruit that we mostly get in southern California we find the fruit here is magnificent. The eggplants, beans and peppers are exquisite too. Locally grown produce is a subtle luxury and we are enjoying it immensely. Our backyard is filled with berry bushes and we are picking several pints a week of raspberries, strawberries and red and black currants. Crushing them in your mouth they seemingly explode with tart earthy juices the flavor of summer and happiness.

The major challenge now is cold drinks. At bistros and restaurants the beers and sodas are served cool, but not really cold, you know, like ice cold, and with the heat they are soon tepid. We don't really fret over it though. We eat, we talk, we sip our drinks and bask in the ambiance of hot summer nights filled with interesting friends, good conversation,  and good food. We are living in the warm, slow lane of Europe's summer, and it is a subtle, languorous pleasure.

Tiggywinkles, Voyeur Squirrels, and the Things the Cat Drags In

A few weeks ago I was awakened by some fairly loud thumping and bumping in the living room and I got up to investigate. Luckily my wife remained asleep and missed the ensuing festivities.

Those of us who have cats know about those little cat secrets that are rarely talked about. Non-cat owners see the cat food commercials with the beautifully groomed cat all lovey-dovey with the supermodel who gives them pate or tuna filet on a crystal saucer and everything looks grand. What non-cat owners may not know, and even many cat owners with an absence of wildlife around their houses may not know either, is that cats are bona fide enthusiastic sadists and, like children, they like to bring their toys inside to play with. With a cat door downstairs our cats are free to bring most anything they want into the house, and they frequently do.

When I ventured into the living room I found both of our cats excitedly huddled around the piano engrossed in a game of "Run for Your Life!" A noble and dynamic mouse periodically bolted over to the wall and under the curtains, or made a mad dash under the coffee table. Eventually he made an ill timed jump or dash and was caught and, with the utmost gentleness, was trotted back to the center of the room and put down to endure another session of torment. As the mouse tired the cats would feign boredom or disinterest and lie down and look in the other direction as if to say, "I'm not watching now so try and run away!" They even let him get some distance away just to make things more exciting, although this sometimes backfires. Now and then the mouse gets away or hides so successfully that the cats lose interest and we end up with a mouse living in the house for a few days until the cats track him down again.

As the mouse contestant becomes fatigued he finally stops running away due to exhaustion and probably hopelessness. At this point the cat will lean down and deliver a tender and loving bite just hard enough to elicit some squeaks, a burst of adrenaline, and the mouse will make another doomed run for it. Of course, as the mouse becomes more and more exhausted the tender love bites become a little more forceful  to elicit the happy response the cat is looking for and... well... you can figure out where that story line ultimately ends. When you find little, dead, wet looking mice lying in the corner or under a coffee table with no apparent injuries you can pretty much deduce what happened to them.

Most of the time I am able to get in on the fun with the cats and with a box or bag I scoop up the mouse and then deposit it down the road two or three houses away. The cats are always let down by this but they don't seem to hold it against me - they usually can't figure out what the heck happened to that mouse.

What is surprising is to find out that squirrels are very cat-like. The magnificent red and black squirrels that live in our yard run madly back and forth through the trees and hedges while our dogs run along the ground below them staring up with wild excitement like the beginning of the Superman show. "It's a Bird! No it's a Something! No it's a Squirrel!" The dogs cannot contain their enthusiasm and the squirrels willingly run them back and forth across the yard until the dogs finally lose interest or give up in frustration. Then, in the same way the cats like to extend the torment, the squirrels come down the tree onto the grass and chatter little arrogant taunts at the dogs who race mightily over to the tree to catch the squirrel. Heh, heh. To no avail of course. Cats like to torment mice, squirrels like to torment dogs. I still haven't seen the squirrels and the cats interact. I suspect the cats know they are outclassed and have no intention of being made to look foolish.

It turns out, interestingly, that my wife has a fox-red squirrel who is quite enamored of her. As she was doing her hair and make up the other day he spied her from the tree which is only a few feet from the bathroom window and sat fixated and staring at her for a few minutes. She made eye contact with him and he was very interested indeed. She complimented him on his very owl like large pointed ears and that seemed to please him too. He then disappeared down the tree only to reappear a minute later with some kind of nut or acorn and proceeded to gnaw on it as he watched her get ready for work, much as one might munch popcorn while engrossed in an entertaining show. We hope we see more of him as the summer progresses.

Perhaps the most charming of visitors has been the local hedgehogs - Tiggywinkles to fans of Beatrix Potter - who seem to wander into our yard during the night every week or so. Our dogs bark at them and scare them into little pincushion balls and then try to pick them up and shake them senseless. When that fails they lie near them and bark manically when they try to move or start to unroll. If the squirrels are going to torment the dogs then the dogs must figure they had better torment the hedgehogs. I bring the dogs in after a bit of this and let the hedgehogs go about their business. The cats have come out and investigated but the hedgehogs are too slow moving to interest them for more than a few minutes. They are gentle easygoing creatures who unroll themselves and then meander about the yard and burrow in the grasses and ferns eating worms, snails and slugs and who knows what else. Then they wander off through our fence into another yard and disappear into the hedges and woods.

Monsieur!

Early March, 2010

I had to buy an  uber vacuum last week. With two huskies and two cats and a wild and semi -jungle yard that sends debris in through the doors and the windows I needed something that could handle the unrelenting stream of hair, leaves, feathers and general dirt pouring into the house.

I went to Manor (think Sears from 40 years ago) and headed to the vacuum section in the House and Home department. There, not far from the vacuums was a man who was idly chatting with a elderly blond lady. As I walked up he turned the full attention of his intent dark eyes on me and raised his eyebrow hopefully.  His resemblance to Hercule Poirot was uncanny - he could have been his brother or cousin. His moustaches were less elaborate than Hercule's yet were similar in visual effect. He looked at me questioningly and had a name tag so I was sure he worked in the store, and I zoomed up to him full speed and asked, "which would be your most powerful vacuum?" He paused for a moment, drew himself up, sighted down his nose at me and reprimanded me, "Monsieur!!!!!"

Unsure of the issue at hand I looked at him apologetically and inquired, "Oui?"

He looked exasperated with me as though I were a slow witted child. Then he demonstrated: he assumed a pleasant expression, nodded to me agreeably and in a neutral tone announced, "Bonjour Monsieur!"

I looked at him numbly for a few seconds then made the connection. "Ah!" I said. I assumed an equally pleasant expression and said back to him, "Bonjour Monsieur!"

Over the following days I quickly learned that this form of greeting is never neglected, not even in case of fire or heart attack! One must always begin conversations this way. We are, after all, civilized human beings, non?

He gave me a tiny nod of approval at this display of proper etiquette and then asked me "How may I be of service?"

I explained I was looking for his most powerful vacuum -  one that could take care of dog and cat hair and dust and ... things. "Of course, Monsieur," he assured me with the absolute confidence of a trained professional. He walked over to the display of vacuums and gestured somewhat grandly to a purple and plastic space-aged looking affair and announced "Le Dyson!" The blond woman he had been talking to tagged along and looked with some surprise and admiration at the vacuum to which we now gave our attention.

I breathed a sigh of relief at the name as we have the same brand back in the states and it is truly an extraordinary machine. "Excellent!" I said. "I'll take it, please."

He asked "Does Monsieur know about the multi layered filtration system?"  (way too complicated in French) and I gently explained that that was not necessary as I knew it was excellent. "Would Monsieur like me to explain the various features of the vacuum?" he queried hopefully. The blond woman who had been listening had her eyebrows raised hopefully too as though she were looking forward to his explanation of the machine's capabilities.

"No", I said, "Thank You. I have this brand in my home in the U.S. and am informed of its capabilities. I know it is marvelous machine."
He was clearly deflated by my response, as was the blond woman who had been following along. What, after all, is the point of being a salesman if one does not have the opportunity to present, to explain, to sell?

He regrouped quickly from this small set back and as he drew a large carton off the shelf below inquired if I desired anything else.

"Do you have a special turbo head for carpet that goes with this machine?"

"Monsieur!" He beamed at me approvingly as if I were a star pupil, and led me to a nearby display that featured an amazing looking attachable vacuum head that resembled a tiny F-117.

He pointed out the items as he described them: high speed rubber bristles that would pick up hair and fibers, adjustable wheels for different height carpet, and a tiny important valve that varied the speed of the brush turbine.

"Very good!" I said. "I definitely need that."

"Alas," Hercule informed me, "This is a special order item, although the vendor is here in the Geneva area."

Hiding my impatience I inquired, "Could we not have the item delivered by tomorrow?"

This time he drew the word out in tiny, long syllables, with a sidelong smirking glance, and chided me, "Monsieur!" he said, either teasing me for my naiveté or admiring my droll sense of Gallic irony - I couldn't tell which.

I continued on. "Will it take two or three days? A week?"

He adopted a neutral expression and said matter-of-factly, "Let us find out."

He went to his station and after a minute of searching through numbers made a phone call. After hanging up he turned to inform me that the part would be delivered to the store the day after tomorrow. I was shocked that the transaction would occur so swiftly.

"Excellent!" I enthused. "That is great news."

I paid for my vacuum and special order part and, carton in hand, thanked him for his assistance.

He drew himself up to full height once again and gave me a tiny formal nod as I left, "At your service, Monsieur!"

PeePee and Thunder (It's Not What You Think)

It rains a lot here in Suisse Romande and there is often thunder and lighting that goes with it. This turn of events has revealed to us heretofore unknown character traits in our two Siberian huskies, Moose and Tasha.

They are beautiful dogs - blond coats with big white plumed tails. Magnificent specimens that do justice to their wolf heritage. Here in Commugny they are greeted on the streets with unrestrained enthusiasm: Manifiques! Belles Betes! The french love their dogs, so much so that we have been invited by restaurant owners to bring them in to dinner with us - a very common practice over here. But that has nothing to do with the rain and thunder that have posed such intriguing problems for us.

The first good thunderstorm freaked Moose and Tasha out so much (they were both outside when the evening storm started) that Tasha managed to crawl into the house through a cat door barely big enough to squeeze a bread loaf through, and Moose pushed through some wire fencing and jumped off a seven foot high ledge so he could beg to get in at the front door.

Once they were in Moose proceeded to stand next to the bed on my wife's side and try to persuade her to let him crawl under the covers with her. He kept trying to nose his way in the bed. That's cute when the cat does it but a seventy pound drooly, dog-breathy, panting, wet, muddy husky is no bedroom charmer,  and we had to sternly order him to lie down, which he finally did. Over the next hour he managed to worm his head underneath the six inch space beneath our bed and lay huddled there all night.

Tasha, we discovered, just finds it too wet to go tinkle outside and waits, for hours if needs be, until our attention is diverted and then sneaks into some hidden corner of the house to go pee pee. When we stand at the door and order to go outside she sits forlornly at the door, ears flattened against her head which is bowed down against her poor little chest, tail tucked under her hunched behind looking utterly miserable as if to say "please don't make me go out there! It's wet! It's cold! I don't want to get my bottom wet!" When she does go out she slinks around in pathetic misery without going until we relent and let her back inside. This is a cousin of the wild wolves that once ruled the forests of North America as well as Northern Europe? Of course if she and Moose escape from our yard on a rainy day (without thunder) they will stay out for hours and get soaking wet and mud covered without giving it a second thought.

Luckily we have a service room in the back of the house with a concrete floor where we have put the pee pee papers for her and she happily sneaks in there thinking, I imagine, that we don't know what she is up to. Fair enough. At least she isn't ruining our carpet.

So this morning, after another thunderstorm last night, Moose lay with his head jammed under the bed and Tasha lay smugly in the corner, having sneaked into the furnace room in the early hours of the morning. We got up and I called them by their new nicknames: "Hey PeePee, hey Thunder!" They looked up at me happily, a little wag to their tails. Time for breakfast. Life is good!