Halen has had a fixation with chihuahuas lately. We think it's because the neighbors have a dachshund, and Halen can't say dachshund, so he calls it a chihuahua. And it's hard to blame him -- it's much more delightful to say "chihuahua" than to say "dachshund." "Chihuahua" has a nice, staccato quality to it, while saying "dachshund" feels like a sausage coming out of your mouth. Oh, wow. I just inadvertently created a ghastly mental picture.The neighbor's chihuahua, you should know, is extraordinary. This morning Halen schooled me in some of the finer points of chihuahua feats. "Daddy," he said earnestly at the breakfast table, "chihuahuas can jump so high. They can jump higher than anything." "Is that right?" I responded. What else do you say to such a flagrant massacre of reality? Halen breathlessly went on about the super-canine things chihuahuas can do. Finally, he was overcome at the awesomeness of chihuahuas. "They're so... amazing," he sighed. "They're just probably the most amazing thing."
In the spirit of family solidarity, I add a little-known chihuahua fact to Halen's assertions that chihuahuas can go faster than airplanes and jump higher than jaguars. I bet you didn't know that when Santa reaches the border of Mexico, he unharnesses his reindeer, slaps a feed bag on each, ties them to a cactus somewhere near Brownsville, and replaces them with a pod of flying chihuahuas to pull his sleigh. Mexico is too hot for reindeer, what with all that Scandinavian fur. Santa needs nude little dogs to deliver gifts to all the good Mexican children.
By the way, is there such thing as a wild chihuahua? If you were, say, lost in the desert in Baja, do you think there's a chance you might be mauled by a group of hungry chihuahuas? What would you call such a group? A pride of chihuahuas? A pack of chihuahuas? A squadron of chihuahuas? Can you imagine a more grisly way to perish than to be slowly gnawed to death by a squadron of wild chihuahuas, as if you were a human gordita? It would probably take them days just to get one of your toenails off. But, man, that would hurt. Viva gorditas.