The author, Lily Bear, at Jerry's Sno Cones.
Photograph by Jack Kenner.
If you’re a dog, as I am a dog, you don’t really need a reason to eat a sno cone. If your human actually invites you to eat the sno cone — you don’t have to steal it from the trash or the sidewalk — so much the better!
That’s how I came to be licking and chomping my way through a rainbow sno cone one cool Friday evening in April. My human said something about a “staycation issue”; I don’t know what that means. I’ve learned to do a few things when the humans ask — I’ll sit, and lie down, and roll over, usually all three in quick succession, for maximum efficiency!, if there’s a food I might receive as compensation — but not “stay.” Why would I stay when I could run to the humans and get belly rubs? Anyway.
So I didn’t really know what the big idea was, but it seemed to involve a car ride so I said yes! Yes I will go with you! I will I will! And then I ran in circles while the humans put my leash on my collar.
We drove to a place I’d never smelled before and got out of the car at a corner lot with a few people milling about and many many more than a few very alluring smells lingering in the air and concentrated near the argyle trash cans. (Yeah I know what argyle is. What?)
The production set-up for our May cover shoot.
Photograph by Cameron Fogle.
My human walked with me around the parking lot so I could get my bearings. (Bear is part of my name, Lily Bear, so I take my bearings pretty seriously.) We met a man near a big van, unloading a lot of equipment. Jack? Asked my human. Yes, Jack! He came over and got down on his paws and said hi to me and I thought he was a pretty good dog, for a human. That’s a good quality in a human, being a dog. My human’s partner, Cameron, is the cheese man (because I find cheese at his house sometimes) but if you get to know him you learn he’s a dog in a human suit, and that’s about the highest compliment I can give.
Some nice people in Tiger blue T-shirts and in tie-dyed T-shirts brought over a big soft cup of sweet rainbow icy stuff, all domed on the top, and they wrapped the cup in another tie-dyed T-shirt (humans do strange things sometime when they want to take pictures), and then – AND THEN – the cheese man came over and put a doggy treat, one of MY doggy treats, in the dome of sweet cold stuff and that meant IT WAS FOR ME IT WAS ALL FOR ME!
Noah Fogle retrieves one of the (many) replenished versions of the famous rainbow sno cone.
All I had to do – and this did get a little complicated, but obviously I managed it, I am a very advanced dog – was sit, and then look over my shoulder when Mom brought the rainbow sno cone toward my mouth. It’s not like I had to think very hard about whether or not to turn my face towards the sno cone; I mean, c’mon. It’s not like I ever strugglein life – not anymore, not like I used to before my human adopted me from the rescue – but it’s also not like I’m given a rainbow sno cone every day, either.
Jack snap-snap-snapped away, and then when I had eaten the dome off the sno cone, the nice people took it to the little building and replenished it again and again and again and I got to eat more and more and MORE of it until Jack said he had gotten the shot, he just knew it. And the light was fading, and it was time to go.
The humans had said something about coming back the next day or another day if we needed to but I had done too good a job the first time around. DARN IT. If I had known we could come back to do the whole thing again I might have made more of a mess of things, but instead I was perfect.
That was my only mistake, being perfect. It happens sometimes.
Lily Bear Traverse with Anna Traverse, getting an olfactory tour of Jerry's before the eating begins.
