sweeper

On my way back from a morning foray to purchase coffee and dwarfish, travel-sized grooming supplies, I encounter a woman walking a pair of placostomus (placostoma?). Unhurried at the end of their leashes, they glide over the sidewalk as if over an aquarium bottom, sucking up errant leaves and twigs and any moss that has accreted during the rainy season, performing search and salvage.

They are basset hounds, of course, not armored catfish. My morning brain grasps this at the same time that it is unwilling to let go of its first impression. The bassets' ears sweep the pavement, their jowls sway, one scoops something green up with his broad, pink tongue and munches it with sad-eyed contentment despite his owner's protestations.

I am still thinking about them as giant, sullen catfish by the time I get to my own stoop. With my plastic sack of toiletries in my right hand, I punch the entry code with my left. The door will not open. I punch it in again, several times, before I realize that I am using the code for a house I have not lived in for many years, one long since sold. With a sigh, I switch the sack into my other hand, punch in the correct code, and head up the stairs.