Things were off kilter for several weeks when Molli the beagle went missing from her roof top.
By JAY CRIDLIN
Published September 30, 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.
The indefatigable Molli loved to sit up there and watch trucks roar by, the drivers staring - 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.
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
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. Coda passed away a year ago, but was the first to discover the staircase in the backyard. Coda, they say, showed Molli the way.
When she turned up missing, Shirley asked her older brother to post a "lost dog" sign on the store marquee.
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 know Molli as the beagle from the roof.
Three weeks after Molli went missing, things weren't looking good.
"What did we do every night?" Shirley asked her daughter.
Kayleigh, 5, rubbed her cheeks. "Prayed."
* * *
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 Lastinger knew exactly what he wanted. He'd ask his parents for something all his own.
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.
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. 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.
He called her Shiloh. He built her a pen and bed at their home near the Polk County line.
It wasn't until Sept. 16 that Lastinger noticed the sign in front of Stevens Hardware. 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' 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.
"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 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."
When Molli scampered up to the roof for the first time in three weeks, Stevens and Raulerson, like the rest of the drivers on Keysville Road, watched and smiled.
