This is Sheriff Peanut Butter Brickle.  It has been awhile, I mean a few minutes, since I last arrested someone.  It has been even longer since that someone was Deputy Digby Pancake.  And if I had the energy today, I would arrest him. But since my beauty sleep has been sorely and rudely interrupted, I am going to ask for back up.  Do you care to log this in my arrest report book?  Do you care to get the pawcuffs?  It is time that you make a citizen’s arrest, because this Sheriff is sleepy.  And I could use your assistance.

It is true that we all have bad dreams, and that sometimes we can’t go to sleep. But if the Deputy can sleep during a drive through Kansas in a windstorm, a fire and smoke warning in California, and tornado force winds in South Dakota, I am confused at the fact that he can’t go to sleep because of a raccoon staring at him from a tree outside his window.

It is no secret that I am the law, but a Sheriff has to have assistance from his Deputy.  And when that said Deputy is scared of the riff raff outside, he pretends to be asleep so that I take care of it.  And more than that.  Then he pretends to be barking in his sleep.  Talking in his sleep.  Yelping in his sleep, so that the raccoon directs his anger at me, because said Deputy is faking being asleep.

I have seen it all.  I have heard it all, y’all.  But I have never been privy to a Deputy keeping his family up all night because he is scared of a masked bandit outside.

If you know the persons at all, you may know that they work a lot and don’t have time for a lot of sleep.  Well, me neither.  And when we tried to finally go to sleep last night, I knew that the riff raft was out there.  But I also knew that we were all real tired.  I knew that the Big Blue Treat Wagon RV was secured.  And I knew that the 2 Traveling Frogs were standing guard on top of the shower skylight.  They had it covered.  But obviously, the Deputy’s trust in my assessment of the situation was lacking.  And so every hour.  Every hour, howling.  Yelping.  Boy Person kept getting up, checking what was wrong.  I tried to take my usual guard station duties by Girl Person in the other room.  But the Deputy was having none of this.  They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Well, I was trying that approach.  But with all the barking and yelping and howling, the Deputy wouldn’t let me miss him at all.

So, after hours of the masked bandit wreaking havoc on us all, Boy Person, Girl Person, and yes, even the Sheriff decided that the only way we were going to get any sleep was to join the Deputy on the kitchen table which has been turned into a dog bed.  Would it be a little crowded? Yes.  But the Deputy’s makeshift jail cell at this point was going to have to hold us all.

I can only imagine that the masked bandit got a kick out of seeing us all sleeping on an RV kitchen table.  But since I was so tired from the whole ordeal, I didn’t care.  Night turned into morning.  And we woke up more tired than when we went to bed…I mean the kitchen table.

Isn’t that how life is?  One day, you are living your life, young and full of energy.  You keep living your life, and the days go by, faster and faster.  One day you wake up and realize that you have less sunsets left than yesterday.  And you don’t think about wasted time not arresting raccoons or getting enough sleep.  Because you just want to keep living.  You want to keep having new stories to tell.  The ones in our life like Digby may irritate us sometimes.  Sometimes, we want to tell them to be quiet.  But if one day you have to watch all of the sunsets alone, with no one talking at all, it will be those irritations that you will want again.  Don’t let the sun set with an empty stomach, or a bad feeling about someone.  Appreciate what they teach you…even if they are barking about it in their sleep.

-Sheriff Peanut Butter Brickle