No one loved my mother’s pot roast more than I, or so I thought. The sight that greeted me in the kitchen sink that Sunday morning was evidence that there was a four-legged member of the family whose passion for pot roast exceeded mine: Sammie.
Sammie was a long and tawny mutt, and seemed to be half worm. If she found you standing, she would squirm and wiggle around your leg, then drop on the floor, roll on her back and look up at you, then squirm her head up onto your foot and stare at you, begging for a belly scratch. If you were actually sitting on the floor, forget it. She’d worm all of her 80 pounds right into your lap and wiggle until no part of her touched the floor. She was a submissive dog, so I was surprised when I found evidence of the bold stratagem she employed to get what she loved even more than I: Mama Kaiser’s fabled pot roast.
Nothing makes a home more aromatic than a pot roast cooking all day in October, the scent mingling with the smell of dry leaves every time the front door opens. I was looking forward to exactly that. It was Saturday night, and before me, in the kitchen sink, was a frozen pot roast. I touched it, found it solid. I worried it might not even be thawed out enough by the morning.
I awoke that Sunday morning, and of course, the first thing I did was to walk downstairs to check on that pot roast. I was the first one awake, and as I crossed through the living room I noticed that Sammie was even more submissive-looking than usual. She was on the couch, completely upside down, wagging the tip of her tail just a little, and wriggling like a worm, or course. I patted her belly, but this did not assuage her.
I entered the kitchen and went to the sink. I must have been wrong about my mother being asleep still, because she’d already gotten the pot roast and put it in the crock pot, seemingly. Only the crock pot was there, empty, on the counter. And while the pot roast was missing, its white Styrofoam card and plastic wrapping still sat in the sink. And my mother never would have neglected to throw the packaging away. Where was the pot roast?
My mother and father awoke, and I availed them of the heist. After a thorough search of the kitchen, we came up with nothing. Soon, all three of us were standing in the living room eyeing the almost supernaturally submissive Sammie. Her back was arched, her tail flipped convulsively, and her head was buried in the couch pillows, so that her eyes were concealed, and only her long snout protruded.
But she couldn’t have done it — the pot roast’s packaging was still lying in the sink? Surely, Sammie was long-legged enough to reach her long muzzle into the sink if she stood on her hind legs, but wouldn’t she have pulled the pot roast out of the sink to eat it? Then it dawned on me — if I had come down at 2, 3, even 4 in the morning, I would have invariably seen Sammie standing on her hind legs, gnawing away at a mostly frozen pot roast. She must have torn open the package and consumed the whole roast on her hind legs — -even the bone!
Of course there was no thought of punishing Sammie. In fact, I felt like congratulating her. That was probably the best night of her life. Besides, Sammie’s contorting on the couch bordered on self-flagellation, so clearly the guilt she felt was punishment enough. After that day, it wasn’t uncommon in the Kaiser house to walk into the kitchen and see Sammy on her hind legs, sniffing the sink expectantly. The miracle of the pot roast never happened for her again, but we did stumble upon a great new prewash system for our dirty dishes. One hand washes the other…paw?
