Lucy plays the piano

And Lucy wins, 4-0 ! ​¹  

Okay, this will have to be quick because the Human Assistant wasted the night reading a novel and arguing with a farm (or whatever) that didn't have his medicine ready.

Lucy went up against the piano and beat it four tries out of four:

➀  Saturday or Sunday Lucy went crazy. She was licking the piano. The up-and-down wood part that holds the keys from sliding into the human's lap.

Licking and licking and panting real fast. Like she was a frantic maniac. She was licking the shine off the wood. The H.A. thought she was poisoning herself! Getting kinda loony from the 'shine.

But when she stopped she was okay. Stopped panting and acting frantic and stuff. But it earned her a stay in a crate the next time H.A. left the house. (Now he needs to get a sturdier crate that size....)

➁  Monday Lucy started doing it again. Only it looked like maybe she wanted to get at the keys. So H.A. lifted the lid off the keys. Not good enough!

Lucy tried to get inside the piano with her whole mouth now. As in, grab something with her teeth and try to move it. This wasn't the first time she used this strategy, so it wasn't a huge surprise. Even though it was an unpleasant one.

H.A. got Lucy to stop that. She calmed down. He went in another room to do stuff.

➂  She did it some more. Some humans never learn!  ​::snort::

So H.A. turned the piano around with its face to the wall. If she can't get to it, she can't scratch it. So he said. And that's pretty much true.

The back of the piano doesn't have fake coloring and shine. So if Lucy chewed on that, no big deal. And she couldn't get to the front of the piano, so she couldn't grab that with her mouth.

➃  So instead she clawed at the side of the piano. Which has fake coloring and shine. That doesn't look quite as good now as it used to.

So to recap:

➊ De-shine - point Lucy
➋ Gouge - point Lucy
➌ Gouge more - point Lucy
➍ Scratch - point Lucy

A clean sweep, four for four!

These pictures aren't up to H.A.'s usual standards. Address comments to him, not me. Some of them look better if you click to see the larger view.

Tucker:  Hey, Lucy's doing this to the piano!	Lucy:  There's a smell all over it!
Lucy:  Hey Tucker!  It's back here too!	Tucker:  Where‽‽‽
Lucy:  Do these things lift off?	Lucy:  Gotta get in there!
Lucy:  If you can't get 'em, lick 'em!	Time for a scratch 'n' slobber sale!

I'm pretty sure Lucy isn't seeing Oswald the rabbit. Maybe Harvey the invisible rabbit.

That's all for now.

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​¹  mr_ed:  No doubt they were playing a Twelve-Tone Series, as mentioned in "New Horizons in Music Appreciation: Beethoven's Symphony No. 5," on the album Report from Hoople, for example.

In this brilliant comedic bit, Grammy winner Peter Schickele (Very Full Professor of musicolology and musical pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople) and Robert Dennis give running "play by play" commentary on the symphony while it's performed.

Appropriately, this is broadcast over USND at H's radio station WOOF (not to be confused with the apparently-real WOOF AM and FM stations in Alabama).