A story involving a dog named Bob…

 A Tall Tale, told in jest, on a sort of a “dare.”  

The mail carrier arrives in her little truck about one p.m.   We have a big mailbox, which will hold good-sized packages along with lots of regular mail, which sits out by the road.  Except for watching on-coming traffic, which I avoid by standing behind and to the side of the box.

Sometimes our mail-lady is off, and another carrier fills in for her.   The substitute whips up to the box, jerks it open, and tosses the mail inside.  There is often a letter intended for someone else, a neighbor or down-the-road addressee.   The sub can be as late as six p.m., and is rarely here earlier than noon.

So when  I heard the mail truck at about 10:30, with its distinctive motor sound, from the kitchen where I was making pancakes for breakfast, and had just served myself a tall stack of pancakes– it encouraged me to run out to see what treasures the mail carrier was depositing in my mailbox.

Dashing out the front door, completely forgetting the bluejay who was concerned about her nest, which she had built in a tree near the porch.  We could hear the baby birds chirping, but I had forgotten them on my haste to get to the mailbox.

The bird, apparently surprised and quite agitated, did a bombing run over my head, diving and squawking as bluejays will do.  I did avoid the bird, which returned to her nest when I had passed.

When I got to the mailbox, I saw that the lazy substitute had decided to just hang the rather large package by its string, from the flag meant to indicate the presence of out-going mail.

It had started to rain, and when I got to the package the ink which had been used for addressing the package had a few drops of rain which had smeared the address, causing the black ink to smudge, and when I extricated the package from the flag, I managed to get black ink on my hands, and on my clothing.

As I dashed back to the house, the bluejay squawked loudly but did not bother to threaten me with its dive-bombing technique.

I could hear Bob, our Irish setter, barking inside the house, and as I entered the kitchen the cat, Trinket, jumped off of the table…knocked over the plate which was holding my stack of pancakes, and accidentally tracked syrup all over the table and when she jumped off the table the whole thing crashed to the floor: the dog, the cat, the plate, the syrup bottle, the pancakes spread with butter and syrup…and the sticky sweet syrup blended unpleasantly with the running ink from the package.

What a mess!  And guess what–there was no mail, only the package.