This past week, a very famous actor, his wife and their dog were found dead in their home.

After some investigation, it was determined that they had been dead for 10 days or more, and nobody had even noticed.

I thought about that.

If I had died, would it take 10 days for people to notice that I was no longer around?

Now, this couple did live on a ranch way out in the middle of nowhere New Mexico so it wasn’t like they had daily visitors or even neighbors they could see from their front porch.

But still, nobody noticed they were dead for maybe up to two weeks? Is that normal?

I pondered this. If I were to drop dead tomorrow in my bathroom, how long would it take for somebody in my family to stop by to see why they had not heard from me.

Would it be the next day, the next week, or a month from now?

Maybe when the buzzards started circling the house and there was a noticeable dip in the traffic on Tik Tok, somebody would say, “hey, has anyone seen… ah, what’s his name?”

Like maybe my lovely wife.

I mean, I do sleep pretty hard at night. And I use a C-PAP. So I can only assume that if she wakes up and I’m laying there on my stomach with my C-PAP humming along like a 1972 Pinto, would she assume I’m still kicking?

After a while, I imagine with all that air blowing up my nose, I would begin to inflate like a balloon. Or maybe more like a blimp.

I guess my wife could keep a knitting needle beside the bed and if there was any doubt that I was still converting oxygen to carbon monoxide, she could poke me with it make just to make sure.

If I screamed and called her a dirty Snollygoster (look that one up), she’d know it wasn’t quite time to apply for my Social Security benefits.

But if I popped and flew around the room like a runaway birthday balloon, she would know to call the undertaker.

And go to our safety deposit box down at the bank and dig out my life insurance policy.

Sometimes I like to sit in my big leather recliner and doze off while she’s watching reruns of Ice Skating With Celebrities (the one with Gary Coleman was pretty good, but he made a terrible doubles partner), she may think I’m just just taking a nap, instead of my brain shutting down and slipping into a coma when Loretta Lynn tries to land a triple axel.

If the shoe was on the other foot, or casket that is, and my lovely wife passed on without much fanfare, I would notice immediately.

And if I tried to hide it, then it wouldn’t take long for the neighbors to think something was afoot when the Amazon packages started piling up in our driveway.

One of the unsolved mysteries surrounding the celebrity couple’s deaths was what happened to their dog?

They had three dogs but only one was found deceased in the house.

Now here is where the story starts to get a little fishy.

I know nobody would notice if I just disappeared, but if one of my precious labradoodles were to pass on to that great puppy farm in the sky, I can guarantee you that everyone on Facebook, Insta, X, Snapchat, My Space, Reddit, Tumblr, eHarmony, Tinder and Christian Mingle would get a notification about their tragic demise within minutes.

I could be gone for a month and the only person who may notice is the guy at the doughnut shop, but if one of dogs were to die, it would be the leading story on CNN, Fox News, the BBC and MSNBC.

MSNBC would probably report that it was because of my dog’s involvement with anti-vaxxers or the Secret Service whacked her because she was having JD Vance’s love child.

The authorities are still trying to determine the cause of death for that celebrity couple. And their dog, too, I guess.

Personally, I think it was an alien abduction gone wrong.

But I heard that on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s podcast, so don’t quote me.

I do know that no matter what the coroner discovers as the cause, it will surely list one thing on their death certificates.

Covid.

They all died from not wearing a mask. And the dog had only had nine boosters.