Oh, Capone!

The wise store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin.

The wise store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin.

“OH, CAPONE!” is a phrase often heard in Babette’s house.

With an appetite inversely proportional to his size, her eighteen-pound Miniature Pinscher has spent most of his days looking for food. He has tried to ingest anything he could get his mouth around—whether it was edible or not.

It started when Babette discovered her little chowhound trash-diving one evening. Babette began keeping the trash can in a cupboard—secured with a rubber band to the knob of the adjoining cupboard so Capone couldn’t open it.

One night, after throwing out a rotisserie chicken carcass, a bolt of lightning lit up the sky, followed by a deafening clap of thunder that shook the house. Babette and her husband heard a loud cracking sound and then a huge crash.

“A tree’s down!” They ran out the door to check on their neighbors. An eighty-foot oak had been hit by lightning and a gigantic branch had landed on the neighbors’ house. No one was hurt, but there was damage to the chimney and roof.

A half hour later, Babette returned to a mess inside the house. The cupboard door was open and the trash can had been pulled out and was lying on its side. There was no sign of the chicken carcass in the trash strewn across the floor. In the corner of the kitchen was Capone with guilt written all over his face and a belly so swollen it appeared as though he were carrying a litter of twelve puppies!

“Oh, Capone,” Babette lamented. “What have you done?”

She rushed him to the emergency vet, where X-rays confirmed that Capone had indeed ingested the entire chicken’s skeletal remains. Somehow, he had gobbled everything whole. It was still intact inside his distended stomach! Babette stayed with Capone for hours in the exam room as the vet gave him medicine to try to expel the chicken.

The medicine eventually worked, and four X-rays later (at one hundred dollars per image) the vet finally declared Capone carcass-free. The entire ordeal cost twelve hundred dollars and left Capone with a permanent description in his file: Capone—the chicken carcass dog.

Babette hoped the chicken caper would teach Capone a lesson.

Months went by with no incidents. As summer was winding down, Babette and her husband decided to apply fresh caulk around the panes of their century-old farmhouse windows. Capone seemed interested in what they were doing, but their focus was on the windows, not him. Finally, the job was done, and it was time to clean up and take showers. About an hour later they walked downstairs and there was Capone—with white putty on his whiskers. The Min Pin had licked the caulk from each and every pane he could reach.

“Oh, Capone . . .” Babette gasped, frantic to find the tube of caulk.

When she found it, she didn’t see any poison warning, but her instincts said, Call the vet.

After explaining the situation to the receptionist, Babette cringed when the woman said, “Oh, I remember Capone. He’s the chicken carcass dog, right?”

“Yes,” Babette said. “That’s him.”

The vet had never treated a dog that had eaten caulk before, but he decided the best course of action would be to induce vomiting with doses of hydrogen peroxide. Thankfully, it worked.

As it did months later when Capone raided the kids’ Easter baskets and scarfed down all the Hershey kisses. And again when he ate a bar of Dial soap.

Oh, Capone . . .

PAWS & PONDER . . .

You probably don’t ever plan to eat a whole chicken carcass (bones and all) or a tube of caulk, and yet “ruin” could still be invited in and out of your mouth. How often have you eaten something you knew wasn’t healthy for you? Or said something unkind without even thinking? In what ways can wisdom protect you from such ruin? And how do you store that knowledge?

Paws & Pray

God, you are the Author and Creator of wisdom. I often do and say things without even thinking of the consequences for myself or for others. Draw my heart and mind to you that I might speak with integrity and grace. Put your love in my heart and your words in my mouth.