This post has been rattling around in my head for years now. It started with sticks. Years ago, Grace was way more interested in sticks than she is now. But not just any old stick, oh no! I entertained myself by attempting to predict which would be a good stick. Some she would barely glance at. Some she would sniff and even pick up. Some she would carry for a few steps, then drop. A few were good enough to trot merrily with for a while or plop down and gnaw for a spell. On a couple of occasions, she carried a spectacular stick all the way home. I still am unable to differentiate a completely uninteresting one from a spectacular one.
Then there were gloves. One morning, she happened upon an abandoned pair of leather work gloves. She sniffed them, then picked up the left one and carried it all the way home. The right one stayed where she'd found them for more than a week. She barely glanced at it.
Balls. Tennis balls are often ignored, sometimes picked up, sometimes carried ten meters or so, but always dropped and forgotten. Big bouncy balls can be ignored, picked up and shaken, or meticulously ripped to shreds. Baseballs - ignored, carried, gnawed or buried.
So now we come to the main event. What constitutes an acceptable burial site? There are criteria that are fathomable to me. Soft ground is definitely preferred. Beside a tree, bush or building is very important. Beyond that, I'm mystified. I can pretty much always tell when she has something she aims to bury. She takes on a whole new attitude. She no longer is sniffing and scanning for the next adventure. She is purposefully seeking a burial site. She'll walk for many minutes, looking right, left and ahead. She'll stop at a tree and paw the earth, then move on. Sometimes she sniffs and paws seven or eight perfectly good (to my obviously inferior senses) possibilities before she starts digging in earnest. Then she drops her prize in the hole, pokes it in with her nose, and very meticulously covers it with the earth she dug up and then some. After that, we're immediately back to business as usual. And out of maybe two hundred items she has buried, she has gone back to retrieve three. What was it about those three items that made them worth digging up? No idea.
I know that I'll never figure out any of these conundrums. She's keeping the mystery alive.
