Dear Kid,

As I mentioned yesterday, the coyote incident was not the only interesting animal encounter of the weekend.

Saturday morning Booker was helping me weed the garden. His job was to lie in the sun, moving slightly every now and then to be sure he was being evenly toasted. He hasn’t shown much interest in worms lately (the ones I’ve been finding have been tiny and apparently not great conversationalists), but yesterday I was unearthing worms the size of Godzilla and these he found worth his time to get up and investigate.

Just prior the Great Coyote Sniff, Booker was making friends with one these giant worms, but he abandoned it to follow his nose.

Later in the day, I uncovered another one of humongous worms. “Would you like to see?” I asked the puppy.

He happily trotted over to see what I’d found. I moved the worm to a patch of dirt I’d already de-weeded so that Booker wouldn’t be in my way. Booker sniffed the new worm. He pawed at it once and sniffed it again.

And then—I kid you not—he began to use his nose to shovel loose soil onto the worm.

Never in all my days have I seen anything like that. He was trying to cover up the worm. (For the record, the worm didn’t exactly cooperate and Booker had to keep shoveling.) It was the most adorable, amazing thing ever.

When Booker had the worm sufficiently covered (or had gotten bored—I’m not sure which) he went off to continue his nap in the sun.

I sat contemplating the canine-worm relationship for a while. I reached no conclusions, interesting or otherwise.

Happy 41414.

Love, Mom