Nellie’s Adventures In LaLa Land, Part The First
Posted By Dia on September 11, 2010
Being a Story and Photo Essay+
+With footnotes!
Miracle-Angel’s Eternal Light, aka Nellie, arrived late at LAX [note how very California she is already].
After flying for innumerable hours, she had a bit of a wait whilst we raced from Air Canada Cargo to Customs* where the Customs agent laughed and said “Oh yeah, Air Canada said you were coming, there’s someone else picking up a dog and they had the wrong paperwork”, at which point our nervous and excited energy changed to anxiety BIG TIME; and then roared back from Customs to Air Canada wondering aloud the entire time what we’d do if the dogs got mixed up. **
*“This dog is a pet, right?” “Er, what are the choices?”
**Visions of lawsuits and tracking her through the wilds of the Greater L.A. area***
***Greater L.A. area refers to an area covering a 5 county region, 34,000 square miles and encompassing 18 million people
When we got back to Air Canada cargo there was no one behind the counter <gulp> but the man finally reappeared and he laughed† and said “Oh yeah, that’s a DOG not a puppy” which helped alleviate our stress.
†He really did, not in a mean way but seriously, we were worried!
Ah, but the end is not near, because now there’s the fee to be paid and the framdangled credit card machine is refusing to process any of my credit cards, ostensibly because they’re business cards, but they aren’t so there’s a conference amongst the workers. Finally it is decided that the approval needs to be done via telephone, which happens in due course and we’re released to go get Nellie and THE LARGEST CRATE KNOWN TO MAN:
- Crate as seen from outside the loading dock
What IS that thing on top? AC? Air Purifier? Emergency oxygen?
So now we’re wondering how two human beings, one of whom will be tied to a freaked out dog, are going to wrestle Franken-crate into a Saturn SUV††:
††It’s a modest sized SUV
Nellie rattling around in the Monster Crate
Breaking in to the crate. That tape is lightweight but effectively sealed her in!
Getting the collar slipped on
Cute girl, ready to LEAP out
And ready to leave NOW please
Really, I could be gone now
SO outta here
Trying to convince her to stop running into the glass doors!
Not sure she’s buying it
Our story thus far –
Dog arrived safely in LA – check
Dog passed through Customs — check
Dog out of crate – check
Crate into SUV – er …
Did I mention it’s a modest sized SUV?
Nellie, however, had other ideas. She was NOT loving the idea of sitting in the back, with or without me
So we thought, how about she & I in the front seat and the C-R-A-T-E in the rest of the car†††:
†††There could have been delirium involved
Uh-huh, not so much:
Nellie, smarter than humans is trying to head into the back seat
We‡ finally managed to get Nellie and the crate and Dia and Bear into the Saturn and we turned our headlights toward home, where our adventure will continue, however, this is probably enough to be getting on with for now.
‡Oh okay, it was Bear