Badger the Dog

This has nothing to do with home improvement, since there is very little activity happening in that regard. Most of the following events, however, actually happened.

The day was not going well for Marv. One of his young employees, just recently hired at the Chick ‘N Stix, was already late twice in two days. He’d had to counsel her, something that resulted in a bleary and teary response from the young woman, whose name was Dawn. He’d also had to suffer through an explanation, involving something to do with wedding preparations for Dawn’s mother, who was to be united with her third husband, and wanted everything to be perfect for the approaching event. It was Dawn’s responsibility to get together something presentable for the tables at the reception, and this seemed to include—from what Marv could tell—an inordinate amount of time spent on the selection of toothpicks. So Dawn had been thus engaged while she should have been attending to her duties at the Chick ‘N Stix.

But it didn’t end there. Exiting the steamy and cramped space that Marv claimed as his office in the back of the noisy carry-out, there was a commotion. Genny, a regular customer who often drove over from her job at the courier service for lunch, had pulled up to the drive-through window. While placing her order, her dog Badger—who often accompanied Genny to work--had spied food through the small window where you pick up the finished orders. Lunging across Genny’s lap, the last she saw of the twenty-five pound dog was his tail as he disappeared inside the restaurant. The mixed beagle knew exactly what he was going for, as he made straight for the milkshake machine, upsetting it and knocking its contents onto the floor. There he slurped quickly, while the startled drive-through employees screamed and ran around in confusion. This is the scene that Marv and Dawn came upon as the tardy fry-station operator was preparing to report back to work. Still upset and bleary about the unfair disciplinary action she’d had to endure, and resentful that her manager Marv could not see the importance of selecting something nice for her mother’s wedding, she stared at the scene unfolding before her. She knew intuitively that—although she had nothing to do with what was happening—it would somehow reflect badly on her.

“Get that goddamned dog out of here!” screamed Marv, while the employees cringed in fear at the rather diminutive canine. The only thing that Badger was threatening was the supply of milkshake mixture, which was already wasted and spreading on the floor. Now he became frightened at the commotion and the loud yelling, tried without success to jump onto the counter from which he’d catapulted himself, and managed only to pull himself up to the ledge, while his rear feet dangled. He could see Genny on the other side of the drive-through window, and wanted more than anything to get back to her and put this terrible confusion behind him. What Genny saw was her dog, barking in fear and bewilderment, hanging from the counter by his front paws. Behind him was a bad action movie sequence of people running around, sounds of yelling, incoherent shouts, and the manager making straight for Badger and unceremoniously hoisting him up and through the drive-through window from which he’d emanated. Dawn started to cry again.

Marv came to the window, now had to address this problem customer and her dog. First the unpleasant issue of counseling Dawn for her tardiness, and now this. It seemed never to end. He used his official position as manager of the Chick ‘N Stix to proclaim Genny and her dog forever banned from using the drive-through window again; if Genny were inclined to dine on the chicken offerings of his establishment in the future, she would have to come into the restaurant and place an order and carry it back to her car—which Marv said should be parked as far away from the door as possible.

Incident at Tuco's Taco Tarp

Thursday night erupted in a confusion of apparent gunfire and sparks as a sign at Tuco’s Taco Tarp dislodged itself, slightly injuring one. Eyewitnesses say that the sign, which sits atop the popular eatery, seemed to be spinning unusually fast, and that it appeared to become momentarily unstable before lifting off from the roof.
“It was going really, really fast,” said eleven-year-old Shauna O’Tree, who was out to dinner with her parents and little brother. “We come here all the time, but I’ve never seen it like that.”
Her father, Darryl O’Tree, added, “I always said something was gonna happen with that thing; it never seemed right, the way it was spinning like that.”
The sign features a likeness of a bandito, wearing a large sombrero and firing a six-shooter. It often spins so fast that observers can’t make out exactly what it is.
Various accounts give this description of what transpired Thursday: As early evening diners entered the restaurant, the spinning sign began making unusual noises, accompanied by the gunfire as usual. When people looked up, they noticed that the whole thing appeared to be wobbling. Before anyone had a chance to react, the bandito flew off the roof, still spinning, and hit the asphalt of the parking lot, where it continued to skitter across the ground.
“I guess the thing was going so fast, it just couldn’t stop,” said Brainard Taylor, in town from Houston to visit his brother. “When it came down on the parking lot, it just kind of kept going, like a top.”
The sign then slightly struck a man in a wheelchair, who was waiting outside the neighboring pizzeria. It upset his chair, making it roll partway down a grassy embankment, where it tipped over. The man and the sign ended up only a few feet apart, and the sound effects that created the noise of a six-shooter continued unabated, as well as the recorded message that played from inside the bandito.

Julius Aswallo, the man in the wheelchair, said that he’d been waiting outside the pizzeria for a small pizza, but that the store did not have the right size box for a small order.
“They had boxes for the large and medium pizzas, but they told me they ain’t had no more for the little ones, so they was going to try to make up a special [box] but that I’d have to wait a little on account they was real busy.” He was helped up the hill by patrons returning to their cars in the parking lot, while the sign still made snapping noises and continued to spark a little.
“I didn’t know nothing like this was gonna happen,” said Mr. Aswallo, who appeared uninjured but said he would not be returning if the sign were put back on the roof.
“That thing ain’t never was right,” he said, shaking his head and looking at the roof where the sign had rocketed onto the parking lot.

John Againagin, an official with the county office that issues permits for signs, said he was unaware of any problems associated with the Tuco’s Taco Tarp sign, but said that all signs were required to have permits and had to be installed in a way that was acceptable under the agency’s requirements. He said that he would make sure that the sign was properly permitted, and look into the accident to ensure that the business owner takes proper precautions in the future. “Occasionally you’ll have a sign fall over in a high wind,” he said, “but this is the first I know of where one came off and kind of kept going.”