In memoriam on el Día de los Muertos

To mark the Day of the Dead (and because I watched 'An American Werewolf in London' over the weekend), I am pausing to remember some recent victims of the Monster Dog. This is not an exhaustive list, just a handful to illustrate Monster Dog's capabilities.

Day of the dead-tired Mama.

First up is the long-suffering Molly Dolly, kidnapped months ago by the Monster Dog and imprisoned in the bathtub. Here she endured aggressive hair-washing and decorative bath-crayon-tattooing at the paws of her captor. Her plastic eyes glazed over with limescale cataracts and even more distressingly, she developed a mullet. I rescued her this week, and she now lives under an assumed identity at an undisclosed location in the lounge.

The sinkable Molly.

Next up is the lovely little Sugar Pixie, who once perched atop a pretty pink Madeira birthday cake with dignity. Monster Dog absconded with Sugar Pixie while a roomful of witnesses were too busy stuffing cake into their faces to notice. By the time I found her the next morning, she was beyond help.

Before: confident Flora.

After: twitchy Merryweather. 

But it's not all doom and grisly gloom at Monster Dog headquarters. St Jude and the Plaster Family, both residents of my bookshelf and former victims of the Monster Dog, have gone on to lead productive lives after undergoing reconstructive surgery and glue therapy.  

Jude's troubles began when Monster Dog scaled the bookshelf and dragged him away to her lair. Having once previously lost his head en route to becoming the patron saint of desperate causes, St Jude is pretty used to this sort of thing. That said, decapitation remains annoying no matter how many times you are faced with it. Monster Dog only managed to rip off Jude's halo and give it a good chew before I could intervene. With a little help from modern medicine and some quality wood glue, the halo was beatifically restored. 

 Take some wood glue and make it better.  

While in the business of pawing the shelf over for victims, Monster Dog also sunk her teeth into a Plaster Family. Although Plaster Papa attempted a brave defence, Monster Dog left his disembodied head in the living room as a direct warning to other decorative statues not to cross her path. Usually decapitation has a poor prognosis, but in this instance I was able to stem the plaster flow with glue and reunite the head with the happy family. 

The dreaded Monster Dog still roams these parts. I fear the curse will not be lifted until she hits adolescence at least. And even then she has a little sister. So as the faithful say to St Jude: pray for us.