Walk 5: Little Falls Stream, Lost Dogs, Lost Parrots

 Well, it's been nothing to get old Noah excited about, but still, it's been downright soggy these past few days which is why Sarah and I took a break from the Cabin John Creek trails.

Some days, solid asphalt underfoot instead of ankle deep mud is the best option.

Instead, we opted for Little Falls stream which has a broad asphalt trail following the creek. I haven't been along this trail for quite a while and some things have been bubbling along since we last trekked the 1.5 miles from Massachusetts Ave to MacArthur Boulevard. To start with, the woods have taken on a distinctly Amazonian feel to them with new wildlife in the offing. Or, to be accurate, an African feeling. Not more than a 100 feet onto the trail, we spotted this poster.

Skeeter is on the loose!

Now, I'm not completely fond of parrots. Back in childhood, a friend's family had an African Grey Parrot, and I'm pretty sure the thing permanently damaged my hearing with its squawks.They kept it in a cage near a bathroom, and the bird learned how to imitate a flushing toilet with uncanny accuracy. I just don't think that pets should do things like that.

Be that as it may, for a few hundred paces, we glanced up in the trees on the off chance that Skeeter might put on an appearance. A few times, we heard whistles before we realized it was just other dog walkers curbing in their beasts and not the renegade fowl. Then I lost interest and concluded that being out in the wild might just be a a lucky break for the hapless bird.

Certainly there are better things to look at along this trail such as the stream itself.

 A little set of falls but not Little Falls.

Also, I hate to say it, but Loki was acting up a bit. This comes from switching him from his preferred streams where he knows all the cut-throughs on the embankment to one where he has to guess. So after each fetch of the tennis ball, he raced ahead looking for a likely spot where he could scramble down to the water. But before he plunged down the mud, he'd drop the ball just so we could find it. You can imagine what it's like searching for a green ball buried in thigh-high green ferns. Just to make it challenging, sometimes Loki would drop the tennis ball and then decide that cut through wasn't a good one after all. So he took off for the next one leaving Sarah and I to guess where the tennis ball was. Trying to head this off, when he emerged from the creek, I told him "Come!" Which he did. After a fashion. Grudgingly, one foot at a time in his anxiety to race off and get set for the throw. Enthusiasm for your work is great, but not to the point where the excitement of the job sort of makes you idiotic.

So we searched for the perfect spot to run him and found it under a steel footbridge. To me, this is the holy grail of walks. A quiet, scenic spot where I can run Loki and Sarah and I can chat.

The Scene of The Crime!

But our idyl was interrupted when a very sweaty man in a jogging outfit clumped onto the bridge with a fairly non-descript brown hound that resembled a Rhodesian Ridgeback except it didn't leading the way. The dog took one look at Loki and charged with the hair-raised on his back. This happens every so often and fortunately, Loki has all the courage of a chicken. The quick and easy way to deal with it is to throw the tennis ball really far away because while Loki is a chicken, he is also a very fast chicken. In fact, I haven't seen another dog keep up with him when he has a tennis ball in sight. So I threw the tennis ball into the creek.

"No! No! No!" shouted the man on the bridge. "God! Joey! No! Not the sewer!"

Excuse me? The sewer? This is a creek, my good fellow. Naturally, since there was not one single dog command in the jogger's outburst, Joey, who wasn't trained a damn to start with, plunged right on into the murky waters behind Loki. Together, the two dogs happily splashed about. Or at least Joey was happy. Loki kept trying to duck away from him to return the ball. Back on shore, I made Loki lie down which usually defuses things with aggressive dogs.

But our jogger was not to be defused. "God! God!" he shouted. "Now I have to give the dog a bath!" He glared at me as if I had caused all the trouble, and he probably would have said a lot more things if Joey hadn't taken off. The man went pelting after him which explained why he looked so hot and bothered to start with. Sarah and I resumed out walk. We turned around at MacArthur Boulevard and made our way back to the start of the walk and our car.

When we reached the footbridge again, who comes running by huffing like a steam engine but our jogger still looking for faithful but foot loose Joey?

"Have you seen a loose dog! Have you seen a loose dog!" he shouted at every group of walkers as he passed them.

"Up there! Up there!" One lady pointed up a steep slope and the jogger pounded up through the undergrowth shouting "Joey! Joey!" and whistling.

We finished our walk but as I recall him blundering through the woods, I wonder if he ever saw Skeeter.

Epilogue: Yes, we do give Loki a bath after each dip in the neighboring creeks but it's not because they are sewers. It's just that creek water sort of stinks.  

 What's the big deal about a daily bath?
  















Practical information: Drive to the junction of Little Falls Parkway and Massachusetts Avenue. Park on the side of the Parkway and cross Massachusetts to the trail. Length is about 1.5 miles one way (all trail distances in this blog are one way). The trail is flat and with asphalt so a good choice during rain.