So the wife and I fly down to Florida with one of the planned activities being the renting of a car for the day to drive an hour or so to see my niece and her first baby, now four months old. The day comes, I’m off to the car rental location and pick up my car. Luckily I look at the dashboard and notice that the “you better get gas very soon” light is on. It’s blaring brightly and I notice that the needle on the gas gauge is buried way below the “E” for empty. Why anyone would want to pick up their car and promptly run out of gas is beyond me. Maybe they have a bizarre sense of humor. Also the rental location does not have a gas pump. I found this odd, as their business is to provide cars that just so happen to need fuel to operate.
After scratching my head for five minutes trying to figure out where the gas cap release button is (I’ve broken the code on why there’s no gas in the car) we have our car, now filled half way up with gas and head north. We arrive at our destination and greet our niece and new baby. He’s very cute and all is good. I look out the back sliding glass doors and see their dog, Loki. An “Oh Shit!” feeling immediately comes over me. He’s a 125-pound Rottweiler with a head the size of one that T-Rex probably had. He’s very eager to meet us as we’re mixing it up pretty good with his Mrs, and his new charge. Turns out he’s a big mush and craves attention. He will not be denied what he feels is his god given right to be scratched and pet until your hands and arms go limp. He has a couple of foibles: He does not want ANYBODY touching his paws and god forbid you try to touch his claws. Their vet tech tried to file one claw, once, and then refused to try any others, as he feared for his life. (I have a flashback remembering that years ago my brother was a vet tech for a short while, until one of his larger canine clients had an off day and mistook his hand for dinner.) So with that, Loki has claws that rival those of a polar bear. Oh and he loves to jump up on people where said claws become extremely dangerous. In the future, if I ever encounter a grizzly bear in the Alaskan outback, it won’t be a totally foreign experience when I’m torn to pieces.
Ah but the piece of resistance, Loki sheds in such volume you’d think a herd of wooly mammoths lived in the house. You’d also think that a short-haired dog has minimal shedding – Wrong! From an hours worth of shedding they could easily stuff a queen size mattress. And when he leans up against you, demanding a thorough back scratch until he passes out, you walk away caked in black hair, looking like a close relative to Sasquatch. Making the experience even more enjoyable, maybe because he’s always in the humid Florida air, is the grimy film that covers your hands after digging into his fur. You need a brillo pad and lots of hot water to scrape it off. Throw all of these attributes into the mix and the icing on the cake is that he carries a thick musky smell that has a lot of heft to it.
Having said all of this, we have a very enjoyable visit, the dog is too friendly but comically so. We drive back to our hotel late (rental location has closed) and instead of paying the hotel $75 to park the car; nearby friends let us use their open parking space – Great! The next morning is bright and sunny, but hot already. I get up to drive the car back to the rental lot. I walk a short block to our friend’s out door parking area. The car looks steamy, but most importantly, it’s still there. I open the door to the car and it was as if someone was sitting inside with a baseball bat and took a full swing at my face. There is a heavy musty smell inside the car and in microseconds, my olfactory glands send a message to my brain, it’s “The Beast!” (A shout out to the Seinfeld episode where a valet with “Beyond BO” ruins Jerry’s car.) Also keep in mind, the dog was never physically “in” our car. I immediately start the car and roll down the windows driving like a mad man in a failed attempt to lose the Loki stench. I get to the rental location, park the car, and throw the keys at the attendant as I quickly head for the door telling anyone that will listen what a great vehicle it was. I’m now waiting for my deep cleaning bill that most certainly has to be on the way.
P.S. When I turned the car back in I figure out why they give you the car with only fumes. On a $75 dollar rental, I bequeathed them about $15 in gas.
