Yesterday, my hometown took on some rain.

As I was advised this morning at approximately 6:00 am, 3.7 inches fell into a rain gauge just a matter of miles from the domain here.  In the meantime, water poured steadily from the downspout of the gutter which feeds onto the walkway up to our front door.

It occurred to me last night while standing there at the porch watching that water come out of that spout what an incredibly stupid and idiotic place to put a down spout.  Why would the contractor or previous owners of our humble abode feed a downspout right in the walking path of unwanted solicitors, census takers, and other canvassers who feel compelled to knock on my door to advise me their trucks will be in the neighborhood in the coming days to install satellite television services, free of Viacom owned channels?

Don’t they know that when they knock on my door and announce their evil intentions of liberating money from my wallet that I will respond by opening the door wide so as to provide the Pit Bull plenty of room to charge through the doorway in an effort of ridding the domain of such nefarious machinations?

After all, they should have gotten a clue when they first rang the bell and heard the custom greeting emanated from a protective Pit Bull which generally translates to “Go away!”

Did I mention that it rained yesterday?

Of course I did.

Naturally, it wasn’t the fact that we had thunder and lightening in the area, or even water coming out of the sky that clued me into the regional precipitation.  Instead, the key indicator was the text from Wifey  when she announced that she would need to bring the TharpSter Treadmill with her to pick me up from Cubeville.

Just on background, the TharpSter Treadmill is the other dog which loves unwanted guests and taunting the Pit Bull with backhanded comments about her questionable parentage.

There have been previous incidents during past rainstorms where she was able to exit the domain, negotiate the poorly placed downspout on the walkway approaching the house, cross the electronic moat, and enter a full blown panic consisting of running throughout the neighborhood in no specific trajectory short of hitting various parked cars, trees, and fire hydrants, bouncing off of said obstacles in order to complete unscheduled course corrections.

Noise phobia tends to inspire such behavior in high strung lab jacks who only have 9 3/4 toes.

So imagine my surprise (or lack thereof) when I approached the truck where Wifey had been waiting for me for the last several minutes, and there was Faith, cowering under Wifey’s legs in the driver’s seat and wondering what had happened to the “damn clutch”.

Her words, not mine.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that clutches had been discontinued in vehicles with automatic transmissions.

As we drove home, Faith insisted on riding bitch instead of in the back seat where she belonged.

Believe me, the irony of Faith riding bitch wasn’t lost on me at all.