Peaches & Herb. Only, there's no Herb.

Autumn in Colorado is about the most fantastic thing you could imagine. Perfectly warm days with no bugs, cool nights with great sleeping weather, pretty gold leaves falling on still-green grass. Nirvana. But to just make it even greater, there are peaches. The western slope of Colorado yields some of the juiciest, yummiest big wonderful fruit you could imagine. Denverites and front range dwellers place their orders in August and get back big boxes of fuzzy yumminess in mid-September. It's a ritual.

Now. Let's pretend you are a smooshy-faced, round-eyed dog. Let's say a nice lady brought a big bag of fuzzy round things up to your house. What would you do?

You would go nutty because there's 1/2 a crate of tennis balls sitting on the table, oh my god, tennis balls, right there, there they are, tennis balls, do you see them, give me one, tasty lovely tennis balls yum yum yum! That's what you'd do.

Only it's just a bag of peaches. A bag of peaches that an 8 year old moves off of the counter because he needs the space for something else, and very wonderfully, a gigantic, perfect peach rolls across the floor. No one is looking.

Pretend you are a smooshy-faced, round-eyed dog. What would you do?

I'll tell you. You would skulk across the floor very carefully, and smoosh your smooshy face against the tennis ball looking object and ever so slightly wrap your raw-steak-like lips around it and sneak into another room, carefully...quietly...can you even believe you just scored the biggest tennis ball ever created, and man, aren't those labradors gonna be jealous? That's what you'd do.

Then, after biting into said tennis ball and discovering its peachy goodness, you'd practically die and go to heaven. You'd tenderly devour the most delicious tennis ball on the planet, its juice staining your big lips as well as the tops of your stumpy wide feet where you held your bounty, until there was nothing left but a little stone, a hard pit. No fun, and not bouncy, nothing left to chew on, so you'd just quietly spit it on the couch so that feeder-lady would clean it up.

A postscript from the smooshy faced one:
Oh delightful juicy peachy tennis ball. You surprised me. I expected the dependable rubbery friend I've come to know, but you were something different, weren't you? Will you surprise me again later and cause me to soil rugs and keep feeder-lady up scrubbing bulldog processed peach goo? Will my sensitive belly reject you at 2am? Actually, no. For we are soul-mates. We are round and we are lovely and we are ever so fuzzy. I sit, at the edge of the counter, using every bit of my bulldog determination to will one of your soft, friendly co-horts to escape the fruit bowl and lavish itself against my furry lips. I can smell the sunsets of a thousand summer nights wafting from high above my reach. I smack the ever present slobber that just thinking of you creates, and swallow hard. Come to me, peachy ball, come to me now.

I'll wait for you always.