The Austin Chronicles - Part 6

Sometimes there's nothing better than fried fish during a Sunday afternoon Saints game. So a couple of weeks ago, that's exactly what we had. Stew pulled out the burner and cast iron pot, a few gallons of vegetable oil, defrosted some trout and we got our fry on.

The weather was unusually fabulous, so after the game Stew took the boat out with a friend and Suzie decided to stay home, open the windows and leave the back door open for Mr. Austin to roam in and out at his discretion. After an hour or two of napping lazily on the sofa using my Sunday afternoon to do productive things around the house, I started to smell a certain greasy, fast-food like aroma. Odd, since we cooked the fish outside several hours ago. The smell seemed to increase as I got closer to a certain guilty-looking puppy. I ran outside to inspect the fryer setup and realized that Stew had left it out, top off, to cool down. It was cool alright, but the pot was missing about 2 quarts of its original contents. Anybody want to guess where that oil went?

For the remainder of the evening, Austin moped around the house with his tail between his legs. That night, we heard a strange sound which I can only describe as a cross between Chewbacca, the principal from Forrest Gump, and a deranged goat. We dashed into the (carpeted) front room and found a freshly deposited pile of puke, which had the consistency of sticky marshmallow creme and gravy. Barf #2 came about an hour later in the (carpeted) living room and was brought on with the same guttural fanfare. This particular specimen was less taffy-like and more slimy, but with a topping of foamy meringue. Thirty minutes later in another section of (carpeted) living room, my oil-spewing pet started revving up and I quickly tried to herd him to the back door or at least to a tiled floor, but he shot back onto the carpet and firehosed another installment of his special brew. This one contained about 3 cups of unchewed and undigested dog food pellets, and a roux-like mixture of burned oil and stomach acid. In fact, imagine you're eating a big bowl of Cocoa Puffs. Except, instead of milk, you pour gumbo on top. Now you get the picture, right? His stomach contents did not, however, contain any sort of household cleaning device or edible fungi. For your reference, the color of this link provides you a handy example of the particular hue of the aforementioned upchuck.

The following day concluded with 2 small batches of french onion soupy stomach acid regurgitations, again on the carpet. Of course. I know what you're thinking. That's a lot of friggin oil. Ha! That's what BP said...

Good news is that Oily McGreaserson is now back to his normal, non-vomiting self. One question though: Do you think we'd qualify for an oil spill claim?