THE DAY AFTER the February earthquake, Mrs. Johnston said that our dog, Rex the Mindless, had predicted it.

You hear these stories after every natural disaster. Farmers say they know a tornado is coming because the chickens stand on their heads. Fishermen know a storm is brewing when the fish stop biting, and builders figure there's going to be a strong wind if a cat howls from the roof they're working on.

Unfortunately, people tell you about these predictions after the natural disaster has destroyed the building or sunk the boat. "I should have listened to the chickens," Farmer Brown will say. "They were all standing on their heads yesterday morning. Now they're all gone."

As for our dog trying to warn us of the quake a day early, the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston was quick to point out that while in human time that is a mere 24 hours, in dog time it's two weeks!

I had to admit I didn't notice a change in Rex's behavior the day before the quake. "I think he got in his required 23 hours of nap time," I told Mrs. Johnston, "and he ate his required six meals during the hour he was awake. He was the same."

Then Mrs. Johnston told me what Rex the Mindless did that convinced her our dog could predict an earthquake a day in advance.

"I found him staring at the wall," she said, ending the sentence with a quick nod that lets me know I should keep my trap shut and continue reading the newspaper. But I'm an idiot and had to say something stupid.

"What do you mean?" I blurted out before I had time to cut out my tongue and sew my lips shut. "The dog was staring at the wall and you think he was trying to warn us about the earthquake?" I asked.

Of course, if I were talking to anyone other than the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston, I would have approached this statement with a different tack. Something like "Are you out of your mind?!? That's the stupidest thing I've ever . . . "

But this was coming from the woman who knows when I am asleep and can take an ax and make me regret ever questioning her, so I just kept my comments to that one question. "He was sitting in the kitchen, just staring at the wall," she repeated. "It was like he knew something was going to happen. And the next day, the earthquake hit. I think he knew something was going to happen."

I was with Rex the Mindless the morning the earthquake hit, and he had no clue what was going on. He ran into the bedroom squealing like a pig and crawled under the bed. I think the reason Rex had been staring at the kitchen wall wasn't because he could see into the future or felt there was an earthquake cooking under his paws. I think he was staring because he just got up from an 18-hour nap and was hungry.

After getting up, Rex first checked his bowl and found nothing to eat. Then he checked with Mrs. Johnston, who was probably in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. No doubt something caught his eye on the kitchen wall. Maybe it was a dark spot or a piece of food the Johnston children flicked off a fork during a pleasant family dinner.

Whatever it was, it caught the dog's attention and he figured he would watch it until his dinner appeared in his bowl. Then he could go back to sleep.

In any case, I'm sure of two things: One, that Rex was not looking into the future and seeing an earthquake; two, that I will never say the first thing to Mrs. Johnston when she tells people how our dog is able to predict earthquakes. Instead, I plan to nod my head when she tells the story and say I was amazed myself. That way I won't get killed by heavy objects falling on my head from earthquakes or something else.

Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter with too much time on his hands. He can be reached at stevejohnst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.