Well, he tried

Last night when I got home I noticed a pile of clothes right in the doorway of my bedroom. Odd, I thought. I didn’t recall leaving them there. Dirty clothes on my bedroom floor aren’t unusual, especially when separated into piles for laundry. But I don’t leave them right in the threshold of my room, ever.

As I stepped over the pile of pants, I noticed a bag of chips on the floor that had been ripped open and emptied. There’s only one possible culprit, unless my house has been infested by gnomes again. Gnomes are generally more careful with bags of chips, at least in my experience, which led me to believe that the dog was somehow involved.

It’s not unusual for the dog to find something to occupy his time while I’m gone. I’ve come home to find that he’s helped himself to something on the kitchen counter previously. What made this an unusual strike for my dog was that, other than a few random crumbs on the floor, the chips were gone.

Sure, he’ll eat what he can grab, if it’s a bag of Beggin’ Strips or something he’d consider sumptuous. But when it’s a bag of plain chips or a box of crackers, he’s usually more interested in the process of tearing up the packaging to get at what’s inside rather than the contents. I’ve saved unscathed sleeves of Ritz crackers before from a pile of shredded cardboard. Did the dog suddenly have a yen for tortilla chips?

I picked up the ripped bag and the few broken chips that were left on the floor and threw them away; so much for nachos tonight. Then I moved the pile of laundry back to where I had left them, and that’s when I saw it: all of the chips lying on the floor, buried under dirty clothes. Either he was saving them for later or he was trying to hide the evidence.

Whichever the reason, it was a pretty clever choice. What better place to hide tortilla chips than under a pile of dirty corduroy and denim? Who would think to look for them there? Obviously not me.

I need to start filming what goes on in my house when I’m not there. I’m curious to see what my dog does during the day to keep himself occupied. Maybe I’ll catch him helping himself to things or maybe I’ll catch those damned gnomes setting him up. I hate gnomes.