Another night of indigestion finds me down here, surfing the web well after midnight.

I hear the 'ka-thump' of a heeler dropping off the bed upstairs, and the tiny clicks of hard toenails on wooden floors. But it's only been an hour or so since they were last outside, so somebody has either got restless legs, or gotten too hot.

I stay on eBay.

I hear the heeler above shuffle back to the bedroom, and think nothing more about it, here in our deathly quiet house.

Which, oddly, is not quiet.

From the next room, I hear a steady tap-tap-tap.

A mouse again?

I check the unimproved room and find the noise is coming from a pile of old newspapers the wife has wrapped in plastic. I stick out my hand.

It comes back wet.

There is rain coming from the ceiling.

Yellow rain.

Daaamn dog!

A half hour later, the filing cabinet pulled back and the pool of urine cleaned from the seam between the dining room and kitchen, I stumble tiredly into the bedroom.

And promptly swat the blind masked heeler, lying next to the bed, on the head.

"Hey!" comes from the wife, who I'd thought sleeping (Else why didn't she come help clean up the pee?), "What was that for?"

For peeing in the house. (I mean, why else?)

"How do you know it was her? The little one was up, too, and just jumped back on the bed!"

So I swatted the little maskless heeler, too.

Sure, I got one innocent heeler who went to sleep hating me.

But the other one knew exactly what she did wrong.