Things were off kilter for several weeks in Durant when Molli the beagle went missing from her roof top.
Jay Cridlin
September 26, 2003
DURANT - Molli picked the trick right up.
It began as soon as she discovered the staircase in Shirley and John Raulerson's back yard. The stairs once led to a sun deck above the garage; now, it's only shingles.
But that didn't matter to Molli, who delighted in scampering up the stairs each and every day with all the restraint one would expect from a jittery jumping-bean beagle pup like herself.
The indefatigable Molli loved to sit up there and watch trucks roar by, the drivers staring - always, without fail - at the tiny beagle perched on the roof.
Molli the Roof Dog has since become something of a neighborhood icon, one of those double-take oddities in rural east Hillsborough that drew gawkers from as far away as Brandon.
The roof was Molli's second home. Some nights, she slept there. Whenever Kayleigh and Bailey, the Raulerson children, ran across the front yard, Molli would run along with them, 6 feet above their heads.
But over the Labor Day weekend, the 11/2-year-old Molli went missing. It wasn't the first time. She'd burrowed under the hedges before. Her invisible electronic collar, Shirley says, wasn't worth its weight in kibble.
This time, Molli didn't come home. The Raulerson rooftop was empty. A few days after her disappearance, the only thing left was a sign on the marquee of Stevens Hardware next door:
LOST BEAGLE ROOF DOG IS MISSING
* * *
Once in a while, perplexed customers wander into Stevens Hardware.
"There's a dog on the roof behind the store!" they say.
"Yeah, I know," says owner Ronald Stevens. "She lives up there."
The store has been in the family for longer than Shirley and Ronald, siblings four years apart, can recall. Their parents owned a neighborhood grocery for decades before it became a hardware store in 1976. Ronald runs the store, and Shirley lives next door, in the house where they grew up.
For several years, the Raulersons owned Coda, a black Lab they adopted when Shirley discovered it walking alone on a beach. Coda was the first to discover the staircase in the backyard. The first to spend afternoons lounging on the roof. Coda, they say, showed Molli the way.
When Coda passed away a year ago, Molli became the Raulersons' family pet. When she turned up missing, Shirley asked her older brother to post a "lost dog" sign on the store marquee.
He happily obliged.
After all, pleas posted on the Stevens marquee are known for their happy endings. Nine years ago, John took Shirley out for a drive by the store, making sure to point out the block-letter message: "SHIRLEY, WILL YOU MARRY ME?"
On the other side, he posted a confident sigh of relief: "SHE SAID YES!"
A few days after Labor Day, the sign went up. Stevens thought the phrase "ROOF DOG" spoke volumes. Surely anyone who drove by on a daily basis would recognize Molli as the beagle from the roof.
Ronald began getting calls. He kept them to himself, thinking it best not to raise his sister's hopes.
Two people even called with what sounded like good news: They'd found a beagle, and thought it might be Molli the Roof Dog. Ronald checked, only to find that both were males.
Three weeks after Molli went missing, things weren't looking good.
"What did we do every night?" Shirley asked her daughter.
Kayleigh rubbed her cheeks. "Prayed."
* * *
Travis Lastinger was used to sharing. When you're the only boy in a family with four older sisters, it's tough to have any one thing that's yours, and only yours.
So for his 11th birthday, Travis knew exactly what he wanted. He'd ask his parents for something all his own, something he alone could keep and care for.
Travis wanted a pet. A dog. His dog.
He first noticed the perfect beagle when he and his mother, Carol, stopped in Durant for gas on her way to work. The dog was hungry and dirty, and had been hanging around the gas station all day, but Travis couldn't help but pet her.
All day long, he talked about "that pretty doggie." Hours later, on the way home, he looked out at the gas station and crossed his fingers.
Sure enough, there was the beagle, tied up outside. Apparently, she had been racing in the store all day, grabbing candy off the shelf.
Travis begged his mother to stop; he went inside and made a deal with the person in charge: If Travis promised he'd keep looking for the dog's owner, he could take her.
Travis was delighted. This beautiful puppy - Shiloh, he called her - was all his. He built her a pen and bed at their home near the Polk County line, and played with her every day when he got home from school.
So apparent was Travis' love for Shiloh that his older sisters couldn't bring themselves to mention they'd seen a lost dog sign in Durant.
It wasn't until Sept. 16, when Carol and Travis were on their way to help with one of his father's tree-trimming jobs, that Lastinger noticed the sign in front of Stevens Hardware.
She read the sign to Travis. There was also a telephone number.
"It's up to you, son, if you want to call or not," she said.
Tears welled up in Travis's eyes. But he knew what he had to do.
"Give me the phone, mama," he said. "I want to call."
* * *
In hindsight, Carol Lastinger doesn't know how she failed to recognize Molli, whom she's seen several times on the Raulersons' roof. Of course, at the time, neither she nor the gas station owners knew Molli had burrowed under the Raulersons' fence.
"I've seen her lots of times, but I never recognized her," Lastinger said. "From a distance, she looks bigger on the roof."
Travis was crushed, but Carol was so proud of her son that she thought again about his birthday wish.
On Sept. 18, the day they returned Molli to the Raulersons, Travis came home early to give her a bath and found a surprise waiting for him: Oreo, a hyperactive Jack Russell terrier puppy.
"He's the perfect pet for Travis," Lastinger said. "When it's time to go to bed, he runs and jumps in Travis' bed."
On Molli's first afternoon home, Kayleigh, 5, and Bailey, 4, took turns scratching her belly and shaking her paw. When Molli scampered up to the roof for the first time in three weeks, the kids leaped around below, giggling as she peered down at them.
Stevens and Raulerson, like the rest of the drivers on Keysville Road, watched and smiled.
Source: http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/26/Brandontimes/Roof_dog__please_come.shtml
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| No picture of Molli, but here's a dog that was actually trapped on a roof and seriously needed help getting down! http://www.thematrixfiles.net/blog/dog-on-roof/ |
Then here's a cute story, with video, of a dog in Greeley CO that spends his days hanging on the roof of his home. It's a much safer situation than the one pictured above, and surely Molli's situation was safer, too: http://www.9news.com/dontmiss/190170/630/Top-dog-hangs-out-on-roof-top-
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