First, I must say that so far the best thing I've done all year is to purchase and install an automatic chicken coop door (http://www.chickendoors.com/). Now I can focus worry-free on round-the-clock child care without the stress of nighttime chicken protection. Whatever birds choose to roost in the coop at night are safe and sound. As for those who don't (namely the guineas), well lets just say we're down to two guineas. It's been serious carnage over here of late!!
But, there is hope for the two lonely guineas because....Jango is back!!!! It's been right at two months since his mysterious disappearance just as the biggest snowstorm of the winter rolled in. I had knocked on doors, posted on various online sites, and spent weeks scanning the roadsides for any sign of him, to no avail. I had assumed he'd been hit by a car, wandered into the woods and died somewhere out of sight. Ever since Wilson's disappearance, I've been keeping an eye on lost-and-found dog pages on Facebook. I quickly skim over the myriad of pictures popping up on my newsfeed to get to more interesting social tidbits, but on Tuesday a very familiar face popped out at me. I had to pull up a picture of Jango to verify the location of specific markings, but I was pretty darn sure it was him. Within a few hours of first seeing the photo, I had Jango back home, safe and sound, with a few extra pounds on him. Getting lost suited him!
The best I can piece together the story, he was found wandering around on a road that is 15-20 miles from here, depending on which route you choose on Google maps, during or just after the snowstorm. Although he was wearing a collar and ID when he went missing, by the time he was taken in by a concerned woman, he had no collar or ID. Due to her living arrangement, this woman could not keep him and passed him on to her brother and sister-in-law. Somewhere along the way he developed serious Lyme disease symptoms and was treated with antibiotics. The sister-in-law grew quite attached to him, but the brother was just "not a dog person". So, Jango's photo was posted on Facebook in hopes of finding his original owners or a good home. That's me!!
Jango was happy to see me and has settled into his old routine already. He spent most of last night barking, hopefully scaring off raccoons. Tonight all is quiet. Although he was a house dog for a while, I still can't convince him to come inside. He seems to prefer his outdoor freedom. Now I'm even more curious as to what happened and how he ended up collarless 15 or more miles from home. Joe thinks he just got lost and roamed that far because he didn't know what to do. That see unlikely to me. Could he really be so stupid as to get to the end of the driveway and decide to head in to town because he can't remember how to turn around and go back home? My theory is that he was dognapped, probably by meth heads, and his collar thrown out to destroy the evidence. He managed to escape from his captors soon after arriving at their destination, but he doesn't know his left from his right, so he wasn't able to retrace the route they'd driven and was left to wandering the neighborhood until a Good Samaritan picked him up. I think that's a far more realistic scenario. I heard a rumor that police are staking out possible meth labs in our area, so I like to throw a few meth heads into my stories these days for good measure.
Either way, we'll never know. We're glad to have him back and readjusting to having a dog again. Now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that one day Wilson's face will pop up somewhere. Stranger things have happened!
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