Pongo's Nose

It was a sunny day in early November 2000. The woods surrounding the house were losing their colorful leaves. Crisp autumn freshness was in the air. There were no bugs, flies or mosquitoes anywhere. Our 6 1/2 year old Dalmatian, Pongo, had died suddenly five months earlier of an aneurysm. He was still missed and continually in my heart and on my mind. 

I had been thinking about him a lot over the past week as there was a smell emanating from my home office that was getting ripe. I knew some poor creature had died and hoped it wasn't inside a wall. I searched the office several times looking for the carcass to no avail. We were about to go away for the weekend and I could only imagine the stench when I returned so I gave it one last sweep, specifically looking behind a pile of books in the corner where I thought the smell was strongest, even though I had looked there three times previously.

As a last resort, I said a prayer to Saint Anthony with the unusual request to find the rodent before I left. (This was a tall order as my fiancée was waiting in the car and I was about to walk out the door.)  As I reached for my purse I mentioned to Saint Anthony that what I really needed was Pongo's nose. He would sniff out the critter in two seconds.

As I turned to walk out the door, in flew a huge, black, one inch long fly. It almost moved in slow motion, bobbing up and down, meandering slowly in a wide arc. It turned left as it entered the office, almost going out of it's way to pass right in front of my face, curved around behind me and descended in the corner behind the suspicious stack of books that I had checked out earlier. I knew my prayer was answered. This time, instead of just looking behind the books, I pulled them out from the wall and behold... a dead baby mouse.  It was only about two inches long including the tail.  So much stink from so little a corpse.  One of the books stuck out a little and hid the creature from view before.

I immediately looked for the fly. I thought it would be on the corpse or on the books or somewhere in the immediate vicinity but it wasn't there.  I checked everywhere.  With my office being off-white with light oak floors, certainly I would have seen the creature fly away.  It was the biggest, fattest fly I ever saw in my entire life -- extremely hard to miss.  But it was gone.  It had simply vanished.

I thanked Saint Anthony and my fiancée disposed of the critter as I recanted this story in amazement. It's little miracles such as this that are often missed in the hustle and bustle of life.  I guess this is a testimony to the fact that there really is someone watching over us, even in the insignificant moments.  And that all prayers get consideration -- even tiny, impossible ones asking for Pongo's nose.

Marie McCaffrey

Also see A Gift From Coty, Canine Tales, Mind - Body - Spirit and Favorite Prayers.

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