CATEGORY: MRS. ANDERSON
PHOTO: FLAT DOG

When Bob and I were first married he told me this story: He had recently made a trip to La Push on the Quileute Indian Reservation on the west coast of Washington.  It is where the Sol Duc River flows into the Pacific.  He had brought along his own small boat and motor with which to explore the river, but as he was starting up river, his motor sputtered and died.  As luck would have it, there was a garage in La Push where boat motors were repaired.  When he brought his last-gasp motor into this establishment, the hospitable Indian mechanics said they could fix it while he waited.  They cleared a place for him at a grease and dirt encrusted table by pushing aside many greasy motor parts and offered him chair, a cup of coffee and a cookie.

He obediently sat down on the equally grimy chair, and as he sipped his coffee the view straight ahead was of a wall on which was nailed a flat mouse and a flat cat.  Both had been long dead and dried in their now forever positions: the mouse was running and the cat was behind it, snarling, and with one foot held high, about to pounce.  Bob said it was not exactly something that heightened his appetite, but he did not let it ruin the taste of his coffee and cookie.

When he told me this, I said that the next thing in the chase scene should be a flat dog, and then a flat bull followed by a flat matador and finally a flat Ava Gardner.  I admitted that the last two of these would be difficult items to acquire.

Bob and his best friend, Bob Greenlee liked to explore the southeast Oregon desert.  On one trip, in a cave, they found (of all things) a flat dog!  Bob Greenlee took a photo of Bob Anderson holding this flat dog up by the tail, which was sticking straight out behind.  The dog was so rigid that it COULD be held up by the tail, as if it were cut out of plywood.  Bob left it there!  I could not believe he would leave such a treasure lying in a cave out in the desert, and not take it back to La Push and present it as a special offering to the Indians with the flat mouse and the flat cat.  I thought he should go right back to that cave and bring home the flat dog.  He refused.  Much later he told me that, on one of their yearly excursions to the desert, he and Bob Greenlee had gone back to that cave, and there was nothing left of the flat dog but a few blobs of fur.  It had been eaten by rodents during the winter.

What a missed opportunity!  If he ever comes back with a picture of a flat bull that he found and left out on the desert, I will never forgive him!

The photo above is of another flat dog that the two Bobs found in another cave.  It does not look like it has been chasing a flat cat like the one that could be held up by the tail.  Too bad.