Honey . . . Guard of the Domain

The other night, I didn't close the door to my room all the way by mistake. I fell asleep to the sounds of Honey the Courageous snoring lightly.

I was brought out from my deep sleep by the loud barks of Honey. These weren't the "Marco's home! I gotta greet him!" kind of barks . . . these were the "Wake up, you dolt! There's an intruder in the house!"

It's amazing how quickly I went from being completely asleep to fully awake. I jumped and staggered out of bed, and ran in the dark, following the loud barks of my pooch.

As the guardian of her domain, she had seen something outside and was doing her darndest best to draw attention to it. I couldn't see anything outside through the back porch, so I turned on the porch light.

The enemy was spotted in the light . . . frozen by the sudden brightness:

A big, menacing, scary, prehistoric . . . possum.

At this point, all my fears melted away, and a sense of relief flooded through me. Honey proceeded to whine and bark some more, letting me know that she wanted to go outside to take care of the trespasser, to show it that no one should trample on her domain.

I made a big deal of thanking her for pointing the critter to me, petted her while telling her to stop barking, and asked her to follow me back to the bedroom. She had a huge doggie grin and her tongue was lolling happily as she followed me back to bed.

After I got into bed, I heard her sigh in contentment. The perimeter was safe again.