Friday nights are basketball nights.  Well, not for Mom and Dad, but for Hank’s people. They load up in their van and head off to the local high school to watch the Girl’s play and then watch the Boy’s play.  If they leave right after the kids get home off the bus they can watch the J.V. Girls play and then the J. V. Boys play, after those groups play, then the Varsity Girls play and then last is the Varsity Boys.  It’s a long, long night of basketball.

Mom says you develop bench-butt, —   after seeing all their kids through all the sports: Football, Volleyball, Basketball, Track, Swimming, and now Soccer (For Blade) she said they will wait until the grandchildren start the Jr. High and High School sport process to go sit for hours and hours on hard benches.

So off goes Hank’s family for hours and hours and hours of ball.

That leaves Hank at home……alone….with just his shock collar on, the four cats, and two goats, and their 2 chickens.  (Hank can’t go out by the chicken pen; they fixed his collar to stop him BEFORE he gets to the chicken pen.  I think it had something to do with the little incident up here last week that got him banned when Mom’s hens are out, I think.)

Just so you can get a good picture in your mind of how things happened you need to know that Hank lives a little more than a football field away from us.  Hank has a white fence all around his house, but on the side that faces our house is a gate.  When the family is gone Hank goes out the gate and sit close to the fence (he would get shocked if he goes too much further out) and ‘talks’ to us.

Fuzzy and I walk over to the hole in the hedge and sit outside the electric fence (we could run over to see him but we would get in trouble) and we ‘talk’ back.

It used to be Hank —- when it was really, really cold this winter that Hank would holler “Grammme, come get me!” for ever so long.  Finally Mom would get in the car drive down and get Hank and bring him home to play with us.  She would call Mom-mom and tell them she had Hank and that they need to come by and pick him up on the way home.

It’s warmer outside now so she doesn’t go get Hank.

Anyhoo, Hank, Fuzzy and I were talking back and forth: “Bark, Bark, Howl, Bay, HOOOOOOOOO, Bark, Bark, Bark!”

“Woof, woof, woof”

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“That’s enough!” Dad said as he was coming in from working out in the shop.

So we stopped for a little while.

Then Hank barked over asking us why we stopping talking.  Fuzzy told him Dad pretty much told us to hang up the phone.

“Oh,” Hank replied.  “Where is Grandpa now?”

“Inside”, I barked back.

“Good” We can talk again.” Hank woofed at us

The night was starting to get to going good, the sun had set and the sky was turning a dark blue, as we picked up our conversation where we left off.

Suddenly…

The coyotes started yipping into our conversation—“Hey, you dumb dogs; you are nothing but soft dollops of pudding pots.”

“What?!”  All three of us barked back in surprise.

Then the game was on….

“Bark, Bark, Bark!” —Us

“Yip, Yap, Yip”—Coyotes

“Bark, Bark, Bark!” —Us

“Yip, Yap, Yip”—Coyotes

“Bark, Bark, Bark!” —Us

“Yip, Yap, Yip”—Coyotes

We gave them a good run for their money, and we were winning too.

Fuzzy warned both Hank and I not to get careless now, we are winning this deadly game of ‘copycat mocking’ so we high-tailed it back into our yards.  (Hank to his back step and Fuzzy and I to our back step.)

Back safely I gazed around the whole yard…everything was quiet. “I guess we beat the coyotes at the copycat game, Fuzzy!”

We both felt so happy we starting laughing, we laughed so hard that we fell down and rolled in the grass and grabbed our sides it hurt so much we were laughing so hard.

Sure was a good feeling!

Boomer