Homies, Day 3: Wump.

There's a dog. He's about waist-high, long haired, super-friendly, and very motivated. When this dog gets going, it takes wild horses to stop him. His name is Coco, but we call him Bulldog behind his back (that's the way he charges).

Coco was getting friskier and friskier every time we moved him, so my homie made a fateful error: he decided to take the dog for a stroll. He strapped on a pair of poorly-fitting white roller blades with pink trim and skated on down the street with Coco several feet ahead, pulling him along. They made excellent progress for several blocks until my homie saw a cute girl by the side of the road.

Using what he believed to be his excellent knot-tying skills, my homie tied Coco's leash to a nearby fire hydrant and advanced to unleash his equally excellent woman-handling skills. "Hey, baby. I seem to have lost my number. Can I have yours?" She told him to get lost. He skated around the block once and came up to her again.

"Well, here I am. What were your other two wishes?"

"Why do you keep talking to me?"

"Because you obviously don't believe in love at first sight." We'll never know if this line was any good, because it was at this moment that my homie realized something profoundly dire: Coco was missing. The dog had somehow slipped the knot and was now charging like a bull in the ring toward an oncoming train a quarter-mile away.

My homie set off in mad pursuit, closing the distance with agonizing slowness. With only a hundred feet before collision, he grabbed the leash and pulled. Coco just hauled them both along without even slowling down. My homie dug his brakes into the ground, hollering for the dog to stop, but it was to no avail. All his efforts did was create two evenly spaced rubber marks on the sidewalk. At the last possible moment, my homie flung himself out of the way and covered his head.

Wump.

Coco was run over by a freight train. For the sake of those who knew him personally, I won't get into all the graphic and disturbing details. Suffice it to say that a trip to the vet wasn't necessary this time. My homie returned home, dejected, and hung up his skates.

"Not good," He told me. "It's day three and we're already lost half the animals."

"More than that, actually," I said mournfully. "You see, I didn't know about Coco, and I was hungry ... so ..."

I motioned toward a simmering pot on the stove. The soft brown face and paws of Snickers, the fattest and most submissive of the two bunnies, peeked over the edge of the pot as if sniffing the air. I took a wooden spatula and pushed him back down into the broth.

A half-hour later, we shared a delicious marinated bunny stew with garlic bread and white wine. It was just the thing to get our minds off our animal troubles.