The Night Of The Robopuppy

During our recent foray to Chicago for our son's Navy bootcamp graduation we had several adventures. Most of them were fun, some were educational, but one of them was downright surreal.

Our son's girlfriend flew out to attend his graduation, and we happily picked her up at O'Hare International Airport. When you pick someone up from an airport, you tend to return them, and at 4AM one morning we did just that, dropped her off so she could catch her flight home. So we had gotten up at 2:45 AM to get the Air BNB we had rented all tidied up and cleared out and our darling girl to the airport on time. That was about four hours sleep or so.

After getting her all situated and aloft, we hopped on the tollway and headed north. Our goal for the first day's drive was to get to Fargo, North Dakota, a brisk 9 hour drive from Chicago. By the time we had tooled through Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, our tails were dragging, as it had already been a long 9 days of traveling to begin with, plus the lack of sleep.

As I have had to travel quite a bit this year, I had a lot of points on my Best Western Hotel app, so I looked ahead while the hubs drove and found this nice lodge-like hotel for the evening. I even cashed in a bit of points and got us a pretty dang fancy room as we both were in need of a cozy and comfy rest. We rolled into that hotel, I picked up the keys at the counter, and we fell into our very nice bed. Sleep visited quickly.

Until it didn't.

At exactly 2AM, someone began beating on our door. Both the hubs and I sat up and just stared groggily at the sound emanating in our direction.

Police! Please open up! drifted through our ears.

The hubs walked up to the door and checked through the peephole. He then opened the door to a smiling officer in full tactical gear.

"Hi folks," he said cordially, "We've got an armed fugitive in the second floor ceiling and we have to evacuate you all so we can gas him out. So could you please get dressed and meet us at the elevator."

I am pretty sure that my mouth fell agape as my brain said, "Of course there is."

Now, I had went to bed with my hair wet, so I am pretty sure I looked smashing as I slipped on my coat, grabbed my purse, and shuffled down the hall in my pj's. We were escorted into the elevator by another smiling officer in full SWAT regalia. There may have been some friendly banter and jokes cracked as we descended to the lobby. I've had so many weird things happen in my life that I just tend to go with the flow these days.

Once in the lobby we joined a plethora of other sleepy looking folks. I actually was the youngest person there not counting some of the officers lurking about. There were a lot of concerned elders and their dogs, it was quite a comical sight really.

The hotel management wanted to bus us all to a close by establishment, but we all politely declined. One gentlemen over by the window looked especially agitated, the reason for which we all were soon to find out why.

After about twenty minutes I heard this clunk, clunk sound from around the great stone fireplace. I then heard a bunch of murmuring and even a couple gasps, so I got up out of my chair and peaked around the corner.

There, coming down the stairs, was a robot dog of German Shepherd size, walking down the stairs like he was taking a stroll in the park, with no less than fifteen SWAT team officers in his wake.

"We got him!" one announced, everyone let out a cheer, and one more than slightly inebriated lady started cheering, loudly, "M'urica!".

I just stood there for a minute watching the Robopuppy glide toward the center of the room. How was it that I was in the middle of the Midwest, in a hotel in the middle of the night, watching a robot dog that helped gas a guy out of the ceiling.

My life is surreal sometimes I swear.

Anyway, we all were released to head back to bed, save one man, the agitated one. Apparently his room, room 230, was ground zero for the gassing of the suspect. You could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't in for a very restful or pleasant night at all. I felt so bad for the man, the look of resignation on his face spoke volumes.

It took the hubs and I a bit to fall back into slumber, but eventually sleep found its way to us and we rested a bit before driving once again. I'll never forget that sight of the Robopuppy and his procession.

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's pretty much seen it all at this point don't ya know iPhone.

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