Chilled Monkey and the Rip-Off Moth – Life with Beanie's Beagle Pack

Do you ever get peed-off about all those products that never come close to delivering their promised service life? Daisy certainly does, but her frustration isn’t focused on LED lightbulbs, TVs or devices with non-replaceable batteries; for her, it’s about moths. She got what she thought was a really good one. It didn’t fly, but it kept flapping its wings and doing unpredictable dances on the floor, and Daisy loved it. Again and again she drew back and pounced on it and gently picked it up in her mouth. She threw it into the air and caught it, then rolled onto her back, delicately holding it between her front paws, gazing at it in innocent wonder.

In the above video imagine that the severed giraffe body part is actually a moth, and you’ll be getting close to what I saw :)

Then abruptly the blummin’ thing stopped working! Moths are supposed to last for days, sometimes weeks, but this one had packed in after a just a few minutes’ play. Worse still it had no support website, and Daisy being Daisy, even if it had come with a paper receipt she’d almost certainly have ripped it up and swallowed it. There was no way to get a refund or a replacement now, and she was not happy! She howled and woofed at it, but to no avail. I picked it up and flushed it down the loo, but in doing so I left the door open just long enough for her to dart in and nick a toilet roll, so at least the day didn’t end too badly.

Monkey on other hand had a very positive experience with a product I’d almost forgotten we had: single-use instant cold packs. We originally bought them as a possible aid for Poppy during seizures, but since we lost her they’d just been taking up space in a cupboard – until Monkey came in from the garden one evening obviously feeling the heat. It had been hot, sunny day, and for most of it Monkey and Daisy had just been snoozing in the shade. When the sun eased up a little, the Beagle Brain Trust went down into the garden and decided to make up for all that lost chase and wrestling time.

Monkey of course is every bit as fit as Daisy, but he’s also twice her weight and prone to getting very, very excited by a chase, so when they came in he was panting heavily; even lying on the cool wood floor wasn’t helping him much. The cold packs popped into my head, so I dug one out and struggled to read the instructions without my glasses. It said something about folding the pack to burst the inner bag. I half expected to burst the whole damn thing and end up spraying myself, the furniture and the walls with nasty chemicals, but fortunately all that happened was that the pack started cooling in my hand. I held it in his lordship’s most accessible armpit, and he liked it. I did the other armpit, and he liked it even more, in fact he liked it so much that he now rolled onto his back, legs akimbo, inviting me to put the pack in his groin. I did so, and very quickly I got the impression that Monkey was liking it a bit too much. I want to stress that at no point did Mr Pinky crash the party, but there were signs that we’d left the PG rating behind and were heading into 18 territory.

As I keep telling people, Monkey has the most loving and gentle nature, but he is also a raving pervert. I withdrew the cold pack before my legs got humped and noted that Monkey had stopped panting, though it was unclear whether this was due to distraction or genuine cooling effects.

As we’re now into August, I have an excuse to do a photo dump for the latter half of July.

Our crab apple tree is losing leaves a little early again, which is of concern to Daisy!