Cheetos Save the Day!

First off, I don’t know for a fact that Cheetos saved the day, or that the day was even saved at all. I’m going to assume they did, because it makes me feel better about what happened. It will make you feel better, too.

The weather folks were calling it Northern California’s worst storm in five years, and nothing I’d seen so far led me think that they’d been wrong. Everywhere there was flooding, garbage cans scattered all over the place, power outages and wooden fences on the ground, their four-by-four support beams snapped like twigs by the ferocious wind. And so I decided to grab my camera, get in the car and get myself a first-hand look.

It turned out to be a lousy day for taking pictures. Well, first of all, it was pouring. Also, I tried to keep my camera dry by shooting through a plastic bag but all this did was mess up the auto-focus. If you need any blurry shots of a gray sky and choppy ocean, I’m your man.

And so I drove to the small grocery store in Pescadero and got a bag of Cheetos and a Diet Coke, and then proceeded to drive down the back road that gets me home. About five minutes later, in the middle of nowhere, I saw a very wet and rather sad-looking dog sniffing along the side of the road. From the car I didn’t see a collar, and I kept driving until I found a place to turn around. I figured I couldn’t do much for him, but I could give him some of my Cheetos.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I had both the bag of Cheetos and a large chocolate chip cookie. I debated which I should give to that poor dog. Sure, I suppose any living thing would much prefer the cookie, but unfortunately for the dog I, too, was one of those living things.  Besides, how do I really know he’d like the cookie more? Maybe he’d be eating it thinking, this is okay, but I sure wish I had some of them Cheetos. And then I remembered that you shouldn’t give chocolate to a dog. Dilemma solved!

By the time I got back to the dog some guy with a truck was there. The guy, a cowboy looking dude equipped with the requisite giant hat and dinner plate-sized belt buckle, was trying to get close enough to the dog to read his tags. So, the dog did have tags after all. Well, that was good!

I continued to drive down the road until I again found a place that was dry enough to turn around. When I got back to the guy with the truck he was walking with a leash in his hand, heading towards the dog and looking for all the world like a cowboy off to lasso some bull, or whatever it is that they lasso.

 I rolled down the window and told him he might have better luck if he enticed the dog with some Cheetos. The cowboy agreed, and held out his hand. Instead, I reached for the large plastic bag beside me, removed the camera and poured a good amount of Cheetos into it. And then I wished him luck and continued on my drive home.

And this is where the assuming part comes in. I’m going to assume that the dog was lured by the Cheetos and successfully leashed. And then the cowboy called the number on the dog’s tag and a grateful owner drove out to pick up his soggy but much beloved pet.

Oh, I suppose it’s remotely possible that it might have gone another way. The cowboy might have become frustrated with the dog and the rain, and so decided to simply get into his warm, dry truck and drive home, listening to country music and munching his free Cheetos all the way. Nah, it couldn’t have happened that way, and I don’t even want to think for a minute that it did.