series of events

I was just thinking about how a series of events happens, how you don't have any idea that one thing is preceding another. How it doesn't even occur to you that one simple thing could even be important. You see a couple of months ago, Roodle found a baby sparrow in her apartment parking lot. Being that she has a really soft heart for birds, she rescued the thing, and then seeing that she works all day quite frequently, she brought the little runt to me to take care of, along with a medicine dropper which we used to feed the little squirt multiple times a day until one day it happily flew away. After it flew the coop, I cleaned the cage and the medicine dropper, put them upstairs in the storeroom, and it was all but forgotten.

So Saturday, when I fed the dogs, Chamine's pill package fell out of her mouth and right next to Miley's bowl. Miley lunged for it, and I screamed, but it was too late. She ate Chamine's phenobarbital AGAIN! This may not seem terribly serious, but the medicine is intended for a dog three times her size, and it is a lethal dose when she ingests it. I swooped her up and yanked her mouth open to try to get it, but it was long gone. I prepared her cocktail of orange juice and hydrogen peroxide, but she wouldn't drink it! The little brat! Did she remember this from last time? So I ran upstairs and retrieved the medicine dropper. I came back and secured her in a football hold, and forced the medicine down her. She was crying and yelping, and yes, I was crying too. I felt so bad. She couldn't understand that I was saving her life. All she could understand was that I was acting irrationally and forcing orange juice down her throat. The hydrogen peroxide did its job faithfully, and she immediately threw up a nice little package of lethal drugs.

When Roodle found that baby sparrow, she asked me if I wanted to take care of it. I remember my response: "Not exactly." So she didn't bring it over . . . until early the next morning. Then with the skill of a practiced thief, she slunk into the house and surreptitiously abandoned it on the kitchen counter. I woke up to a chirping, hungry baby bird that morning. And it began. We started feeding it every few minutes for several days, and then one day, it took flight. That little medicine dropper then innocently waited upstairs in the vacant cage until I summoned it frantically. Had Roodle not brought me that baby bird, I wouldn't have had the medicine dropper, Miley wouldn't have taken the hydrogen peroxide, and . . . well . . . thanks for bringing me a baby bird one early summer morning, Roodle. You saved my puppy's life.