Zippy: The Dog Who Did…Nothing.
Nobody Flashes
This morning I was reading about dogs…how they understand how to read human communications, even better than chimps. For instance, every day, when I go outside to work in the yard, all I have to do is go into the bathroom, and tie my hair back…and my two dogs go absolutely nuts. They jump up and down, bark, yelp,—- you would think it was the last inning of the world series and I had just hit the winning run in. They know they will get to go out too.
Just by me simply putting a rubber band around my hair.
And here’s what even more fantastic…I can go into the bathroom, and CLOSE THE DOOR, and they STILL know I’m putting my hair back.
When it comes to food, Zippy comes and scratches my leg. Or stares at me. And if I ignore her…she barks. I am like her private IPAD. I am at her command.
Zippy is an excellent communicator so that’s why I’m baffled about last night.
Why didn’t Zippy TELL us that the kitchen was on fire?
Let me set this up.
It was around 10.30 at night, and my husband had put on his CPAC machine, and rolled over to sleep…I still had the TV on, and I was getting ready to go into my office to write, and I heard a funny popping sound.
Now, Zippy was ON the floor, staring into the kitchen, literally watching a blanket that I had on my bird’s cage…go up in six-foot flames. She just sat there…
“Hey, your machine is making a funny noise” I told my husband.
And then for no particular reason, I decided to go into the kitchen for some water…that’s when I saw flames, reaching up to the ceiling…a lamp that was turned off, had touched the blanket on the bird-cage and instantly, that blanket had flared into flames. The metal bird-cage was on fire, and my three parakeets were of course, at the other end of the cage…fighting for their lives.
Zippy, just sat there…smiling…calming watching until I yelled.
FIRE! FIRE!, FIRE! FIRE!
My husband jumped out of bed, and took two blankets and somehow miraculously smothered the fire out, although it took him some time. If the curtains which were near the flame had caught on fire, we would have not have been able to stop the room from going up.
He got second degree burns, and big blisters on his fingers from the flames.
Smoke was everywhere, and since we had two blankets that had caught on fire, we had thrown one on the kitchen floor. It was no longer in flames. (or so we thought.)
We left it there. (Bad idea)
I went to caring for the birds. Flames had even fallen to the bottom of the cage. Half of the white bird-cage was black. The lamp plastic had melted on to the rug on the floor, and my kitchen chairs which were nearby, were damaged from the fire. Flames had fallen all over the floor.
Zippy thought it was pretty I guess. (Yep, she was sitting there calmly…just like that picture.) 
While I was trying to calm the birds (By the grace of god they only got soot on them) the blanket we had left on the floor was STILL on fire.
“Hey ! This blanket is still smoking!” I yelled, to my husband who of course, was in extreme pain with his hand in a pan of water.
When we lifted it up, a big hole had burnt through the kitchen rug. We threw it in the sink, which is what we should have done in the first place.
So, here’s the moral to the story: If I had NOT had gone into the kitchen when I did, the house could have very well burnt down, no thanks to the dog who did NOT save his masters from the fire.
I read these stories all the time….
Dog saved baby from fire.
Dog went back into the house to save kids.
Dog WARNED the people in the house that it was on fire.
You read them too.
Zippy did not move until I yelled FIRE!
Then she ran…and hide in the front room. So much for the “Zippy saved our lives” story in Readers Digest, which I CERTAINLY would have written.
Tonight my birds, won’t go over to their side of the cage. They REMEMBER what happened last night, and how they were almost fried.
Zippy the great communicator, acts like it just another day. She doesn’t remember a thing.
But I can’t blame this on Zippy.
It was my fault for thinking that JUST because a lamp is off, doesn’t mean it’s not still hot. The simple truth is, I was just tired and not thinking when I put the cover on the cage.
As for Zippy, she saves my life every day with her joyful happiness at the simple sight of me putting my hair back. Or going for a ride, or a walk, or just eating her bone.
I guess I’ll forgive her this time. But, we DO have to work on our communication.
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About
I am a nobody. If the different classes of America were color-coded, I would be in the yucky brown, one rung up from the bottom. I grew up in Naples, Florida and live near the Mississippi River now with my husband and two dogs. I am part of the slowly disappearing middle-class. I was a musician most of my life: drummer/singer/keyboards—but I retired before the plastic surgery flu hit. I have no degrees, which could be a good thing…depending on how you view our educational system. I do have three patents…but that really doesn’t make me a somebody. The one thing that is constant in my life is my OPINIONS, which i have more than perhaps even Carl Sagan could have imagined…mostly political. (yes…my ancestors were crabby buggers)
Hopefully other nobody’s will put their opinions on my site. But, if you happen to be a somebody, you’re more than welcomed to help out.
It’s my Nobody Opinion that Nobody’s Perfect, and Nobody Cares, that Nobody Knows why Nobody Wins, and when that happens, Nobody Wonders, why Nobody Flashes, why Nobody’s Fooled, but then Nobody remembers that Nobody ALWAYS Reports the truth.
You can email me at joyanna_adams@yahoo.com
Joyanna Adams
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Joyanna Adams 
First: Let me assure you snopercod, we DO have a fire extinguisher in the Kitchen, but the BIRD cage was on fire, (It’s a good size bird cage…about five feet high…(Yes, the metal bars were burning….and if we had used that, my adorable little birds would have died for sure from the fumes, because they were still in the cage, and If the flames had gone to the curtains, we would have used it. I was standing ready with it…but my husband told me no…he’d take care of it.
He was determined to save the birds.
They are very happy little campers today…and that shows you what real love can do I guess…he knew I’d be a mess if my darlings had died from fire. . I have a real soft spot in my hearts for birds…don’t ask me why. And plants too. My neighbors complain because I have an old crab apple tree that was struck by lighting, (which split it in half) and now it has a big hole in the middle of it, and yet, every spring it still blossoms, and I figure if it is STILL kicking strong, who am I to cut it down just because it’s got some defeats?
. Thanks so much, both of you, for sharing your close call stories. I feel MUCH better that I’m not the only one who…is absent minded.
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Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were less than prepared for a kitchen fire and I’m glad your birdies are OK. It’s just a shame that the EPA made Halon 1211 fire extinguishers outrageously expensive. Halon is a gas which leaves no residue and is harmless to humans and animals in reasonable concentrations. It’s what they used to use in the crew module of the Space Shuttle because you can breath it without harm.
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No, you were great snopercod…but here’s one thing you CAN scold me about…we need to put new batteries in our fire extinguisher’s. None of them work. I was reminding myself today that I need to do that and soon. You are right about it all. And thanks for caring!
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How frightening! I promise not to chastise you for NOT HAVING A FIRE EXTINGUISHER handy until after I relate my recent story. We live out in the woods where there’s nobody around and it’s still legal to burn brush when the conditions are safe. So a month ago I made a pile in an open area and torched it off with some gasoline. Then I went inside and forgot about it. (This is when the hair on the nape of your neck should start to stand up.) It wasn’t long before my wife started screaming, “Get your a$$ out here, there’s a fire!”. Somehow the fire had spread from the clearing to several surrounding areas, and was in the process of licking up several tall trees. Oh crap!
A few years ago we had a forest fire in the area which got very close to us, so I got nervous and spent about $15,000 having a dam and a pond built (it’s still legal to do that where I live as well) and putting in a fire pump and distribution system. With the 2HP pump running, I can shoot a strong stream of water about 75′ at any number of places around our property. Unfortunately, I had drained the system down for the winter and all the outlet valves were open. When I started the pump, water just started shooting out all over the place.
So here I am with flames licking at the trees, running all over the place shutting off streams of water shooting out of all the open valves while my wife is spraying what water was left over on the fire. Somehow we managed to put all the little fires out before they really got away from us…but not before it burned up the bottom half of our beautiful Deodar Cedar tree, a Hemlock Fir, several Rhododendrons, a holly bush, and a camellia.
Yes, as my wife continually reminds me, “I was stupid”.
Now please, get yourself on amazon.com and order yourself a fire extinguisher or two or three.
Now that I’m done lecturing you, thanks for the story. Dogs are mysterious creatures, for sure. Sometimes they seem to have special powers, and sometimes they’re just plain stupid. Come to think of it, I guess I’m the same way…
P.S. Your husband must be a staunch conservative if he wears a CPAC machine at night. LOL!
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Whoa !!! That was a close thing.
0/10 for Zippy the audience /spectator. 11/10 for Bruce the fireman and hero. I hope you kissed him better. And I guess you get -2/10 for being worn out tired and setting up the disaster in the first place.
But who has not been in your dainty slippers? I have left the grill on before and blackened the entire kitchen, walls, ceiling, cupboards, the lot. I hope your mess was not as hard to clean up as mine, even though I scored a grand -5/10.
🙂
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