Caos Keeping Watch

At the end of the house, in another apartment, there lives a dog, Caos, Chaos. He is the biggest dog I’ve ever known. We joke that he is really a small horse. He’s an excellent watchdog, because he is truly menacing. Weighing in at over 100 pounds and standing about table height, he is quite a form and a force to deal with. Fumino, Smokey, a sweet cat who lives down the hill likes to follow us on our walks, but he stops dead in his tracks when we near the house since he knows Caos is guarding the place.

We’ve known Caos for about 10 years now, so he is quite friendly with us—even playful. A couple of days ago we were working in the garden when Caos escaped from his yard. He came bounding into ours, slurped water from the birdbath and began marking his territory, which apparently he has now fully claimed. All of a sudden he spied something exciting: Em had removed his garden gloves, casually tossing then onto the grass, leaving them for just a couple of minutes to step inside for a drink of water. With one quick scoop, Caos snatched the left-hand glove and began frolicking with it. A funny aside is that Emerson had just bought new gloves and was giving them their first test run in the garden (which mostly means weeding.)

I heard Em negotiating with Caos (of course, Caos speaks Italian), “Vieni qua, come here, Dialo me, Give it to me. Caos, metti giu il mio guanto nuovo, put down my new glove.” Caos was not persuaded. He absolutely loves gloves, socks, shoes and hats. When and if he claims any of these items, they are usually considered gone. We don’t know if he eats them—he certainly could. Maybe he buries them, as evidenced by the perpetual dried dirt on his nose. After a few minutes Em came walking over to me with a bit of a dejected look on his face.

Mismatched Pair

“Well,” I said, “did you get the glove back?” He said “No. He started that really low growl and I thought I’d rather let him have the glove than my hand.” “Good choice.” I said. “They have plenty more gloves at the Utilità, utility store. They usually don’t stock size 10 hands.”

When we passed Caos on our walk later that afternoon, he was lounging in the shade by the iron gate. I detected a self-satisfied smirk on his face and saw him casually glance at Em’s hands to see if there were more where the stolen glove came from. Caos is a good dog and certainly didn’t mean any harm—at least that’s my theory.

Posted on July 24, 2010

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