“Aussie, you look terrible! What happened to you?”

“I had a big fight on my hands, Illegal Chihuahua, the biggest of all. It was an EXISTENTIAL THREAT! I struggled and fought like a maniac, my life was at stake. I almost didn’t make it.”

“Aussie, were you in Gaza?”

“Not in Gaza, Illegal.”

“I know, you were in Ukraine. It’s terrible there.”

“Worse than Ukraine.”

“Sudan? Niger? An English Premier League football game?”

“Worse. I was at the car wash.”

“The car wash, Aussie?”

“She, your beloved Senora, took me to the car wash, Illegal, even though she knows it’s a place of shock and trauma. You know how certain humans get traumatized by what happened in death camps years ago? That’s how I was traumatized by the car wash.”

“What happened, Supreme Being?”

“Some time ago she took the car and me into the automatic car wash and left the back window open. Soap blasted its way in, and I turned all white. Your Senora looks at the rearview mirror and says, ‘Aussie, how did you get so white suddenly?’”

“What did you say, Aussie?”

“I said: ‘You left the window open, moron!’”

“You called the Senora a moron?”

“Imagine that you’ve been black all your life—after all, I am half German Shepherd, Henry—and suddenly you’ve turned white!”

“It’s beyond imagination, Aussie. A catastrophe!”

“Exactly my point, Chihuahua.”

“What did the Senora do?”

“She laughed, Henry, she laughed! Imagine that. I am traumatized, and she laughs.”

“But what happened now?”

“Today we started with the vacuuming. She tells me to go to the front seat and stay there while she vacuums the back seat. Have you ever heard a commercial vacuum cleaner, Henry? You would go deaf in a minute. I tried to escape but I couldn’t get out the door. Then she tells me to go to the back seat while she cleans out the front. Do I make trouble? I do not. I do just as I’m told. I tell her: ‘I’ll do anything you want, just don’t go through the Tunnel of Horrors, the automatic car wash.’ Does she listen to me?”

“Of course, she does. The Senora loves you.”

“She drives right into the automatic car wash. At least this time she remembered to shut all the windows, but you should see it, Henry. First, black arms open up from the sides and release a stream of water. There is thunder and a light show—”

“A light show, Aussie?”

“They use soap with different colors now, Henry, so the windows fill up with color while thunder crashes all around. Lucky for me, I’m mostly color blind. I don’t notice most of it anyway because I jump from the back seat to the front seat to the back seat to the front seat to the—”

“What happens then, Supreme Being?”

“A typhoon, Henry, that’s what happens. Monsoons and hurricanes. Walls of water, squalls of water!”

“Did you drown?”

“I was too busy hopping from the back seat to the front seat to the back, etc. Climate change is real, Illegal Chihuahua. I went through a Category 10 Hurricane in that carwash. No place to go, no place is safe.”

“Gaza may be safe.”

“Why, Henry?”

“Because they have no water.”

“Henry, Gaza is nothing like the car wash. No catastrophe is like the car wash. And you know what came after? Hot winds! Gales of hot winds came out of those black arms and almost blew all of us to Oz.”

“Where’s Oz, Aussie?”

“It’s where everything that’s lost ends up. I tell you, Henry, humans have come up with evil things, but nothing, nothing, as evil as the car wash.”

“The Senora says she doesn’t believe in evil.”

“She is not to be trusted, Henry. Now I must be off.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m off to see Fido Tail-Wagger.”

“The Medicine Mutt? Is he doing ceremony for you, Aussie?”

“He’s praying for me, Illegal. He’s praying that carwashes burn in hell.”

“Will we then have peace, Aussie?”

“I doubt it, Illegal. Leave it to humans, they’ll always think of something.”