What is the allure of manure?

Tomorrow is Wednesday. Actually, Wednesday arrives in about forty five minutes. It is time to go to bed, but I want to plunk away at this keyboard for a few more minutes. I walked Tex out into the front yard this afternoon at lunch. After we returned inside, I took Tex's chain off his neck and turned to try to warm a can of soup for my lunch. As I walked toward the refrigerator, I felt a rush of cool wind and turned to notice that Tex was nowhere to be seen. I stepped over toward the carport door only to see it ajar and Tex nowhere to be found. I looked outside and Tex was gone.

I walked out onto the driveway and called Tex with an imitation dog howl. He didn't respond. I stood out on the driveway and tried to find him trotting away from the house. Nowhere. I could hear some of the dogs tittering around the neighborhood, but I couldn't hear Tex.

Kate came home a little later. Ordinarily, when he leaves on a neighborhood jaunt, which happens every so often, he returns to the house in an hour, covered with deer manure, usually on his neck, and lies in the driveway in the sun. When lunch was over, Kate and I drove around the neighborhood trying to find Tex. He was nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, we drove around the corner to find about five police squad cars parked at a neighbor's house. It appeared like a repo wrecker was trying to remove a car from the carport. The police had someone in their custody. Another civilian was talking on the cellphone in the middle of the street. A city truck was stopped beyond the melee. We pulled up to see if anyone had seen Tex. The city worker said that he was just trying to figure out what was happening on the corner.

The police left and so did we. Kate and I pulled around the mess, and drove up our street toward the house. When we got to the house, Mr. Griffin, our next door neighbor, was standing in the driveway with his dog and Tex, waiting for us. Tex had apparently decided to visit Mr. Griffin.

We have never had a dog who roams too much around the neighborhood. Only Tex seems to like to roam around, find the deer manure, then return to the house. At this point, he ordinarily needs a bath to remove the pungent aroma on his neck. Tex clearly needs to find a different cologne.