Yesterday, I was sitting in my attic writing when I heard some dogs barking below. My attic is very high in the air, taller than all the other houses around it. Dogs bark all the time. There is an especially neurotic collie that lives a few doors down and barks sharply and often through the the bedraggled tree line that separates our properties. As it continued, however, it occurred to me that all the fuss may have been coming from my dogs, and when it didn't cease but rather became more amplified as the seconds went by, I set down my coffee mug, sighed and lumbered down the stairs wondering again why I even own the damn things in the first place.
Halfway down I heard Melanie loudly addressing them in the yard with more urgency in her voice than normal.
"Jade! Dusty! Jade! Dust...," and then the clatter of the screen door slamming shut and then silence. It didn't sound right.
I got to the back deck and she filled me in of the situation before being asked.
"Jade got a cat I think," she said pointing across the yard near the fence line.
By the time I strode across the grass and made it to the scene, there was apparently a lull in the fight. On the ground was not a cat at all, but a pudgy brown groundhog on its back. It had a pathetic hold of Jade--the small black pit-bull mutt we saved two years ago that has never made it fully into my heart--and had its little groundhog teeth clutched on to the loose skin of her face. The bite was clearly not bothering Jade in the least. Jade had the thing's leg in her mouth. Dusty, our other dog, a blonde 70-pound retriever of some kind, was just barking and leaping about. He's always kind of been a flighty dog that gets by on his looks and runs pretty well after tennis balls.
My addition to the scene however seemed to spark something in the dogs, as if their time to kill was coming to a close and that they'd better get on with it before the tall human starts yelling again. Jade released the groundhog's foot and went for the more vital bits of neck and belly. I guess Dusty was getting in there somewhere too, it was hard to tell, but he has a soft bite and was bred to retrieve already dead things so he was the secondary concern.
I did yell, a lot, and growled their names, but the taste of blood had whipped both dogs into such a frenzy that they heard nothing but their primal wolfish instincts to make a gruesome example of this groundhog. It would serve as a message to all other yard vermin that if they dare enter the fence, this would be their fate as well. I stopped yelling.
I remember thinking of how the dogs weren't being very efficient in this slaughter. We had a much larger pit-bull a few years back that had snatched and killed one within seconds like a true professional. This in comparison was certainly amateur hour and I felt embarrassed to own dogs incapable of killing cleanly. They can't even do that right. I wasn't going to reach my hands into the fray under any circumstance, so I turned my back and walked the other direction, assuming my dogs would sooner or later finish the job.
Melanie was on the deck watching it all. I shrugged at her and she shrugged back and went inside. I meandered over to the other side of the yard where I keep my hose and started dragging it back over to the murder scene. The cheap plastic apparatus that keeps my hose coiled and out of the way is such a piece of shit that rather than feed me more of the hose as I pull on it, it invariably tilts over onto its side, completely defeating the thing's only purpose. I find myself cursing at it whenever I need it.
My concern at this point, wasn't whether they had killed the large rodent by now, but rather getting its innards all over their faces and coats. I stormed back over to the hose and yelled out for Melanie inside. "Feed this to me," I barked when she came out, pointing at the toppled hose-roller-thing.
On the spigot of the hose, there are options of what type of stream you'd like to employ. I chose jet, and as soon as I was close enough, I lasered a sharp beam of water into the faces of my deranged canines. It worked surprisingly well as both dogs were broken from their murderous trance and seemed to see me there for the first time. "Get outta here!" I screamed, spraying them further away from the victim. They reluctantly retreated back across the yard and up the deck. I gave each one a once over and rather than them being splattered with groundhog blood and licking their open wounds from the fight, each were unscathed and their fur guts-free. Jade had a small red scrape on her snout but there was no real active bleeding.
Once both of the brutes were corralled into the house and the yard was quiet again, I allowed myself a deep inhale and a sigh, before going into my barn to fetch my snow shovel and a rake. I sauntered back over to the creepy brown pile of fur and braced for the up-close rawness of death. I stopped about five feet from the critter and had a look. It was still breathing.
Fuck.
I don't own a gun. If I did, I think I could probably fire it in my yard on a Saturday afternoon in Cincinnati without much recourse from scared neighbors or nearby cops, especially once they are informed of the humanitarian reason for the shot, but alas, it was not to be. I thought about crushing its little head with a cinder block to put the little shit out of its misery, but that was so archaic and messy that it felt a bit over-the-top. I walked inside to ask Melanie what she thought. She was in the kitchen inspecting the dogs closer with latex gloves on. Each of the bastards were panting and looking pretty proud of themselves. I explained to her that it was still breathing but was also still on its back and not looking too good. She brainstormed about possibly drowning it somehow, but how the hell would we do that? I floated my cinder block suggestion out and she made a horrified face. I thought that even suggesting something so brutal might have changed her whole outlook on me forever.
So, still without much of a plan, but convinced that crushing its skull would be the least painful method and would certainly get the job done, I halted in my tracks as I looked across the yard to the body only to see that it was now upright and looking directly at me. This brought on a whole new set of questions. What now?
Melanie came out and I pointed at the little groundhog head lifted over the high grass (I'm grossly overdue to cut my grass). I decided I should get a little closer to examine the extent of its injuries. I don't know what good this could have done, but it seemed like a practical fact-finding thing to do. A few steps in its direction was enough to spook the poor injured mammal to muster up what life it did have and it limped away into the neighbor's yard.
I felt bad for the guy. When it scurried off, I could see real damage to its body around its neck and underarms. It wasn't doing well and probably wouldn't last that long out in "the wild". Sure, I live in the city, but Mt. Airy park and all of its 1,480-acre glory is only a few hundred yards from my house and plenty of predators lurk about the woodsy neighborhood at night. Maybe, and I don't know if it's worse or not than getting eaten by something bigger, the groundhog would find the closest shady secluded spot to curl up in and decide that since it can't really move well or eat well or run well, it'd be better off just to lay there and die.
This story may not be finished. It wouldn't surprise me to encounter this poor sap's corpse in a much worse state than what my dogs had done to it. Or, maybe I will be in my attic writing again and look out through its dirty windows down to the yard and see a haggard, limping brown ball of fat fur trot across the property and sneak into my barn where I am convinced a metropolis of the bastards have made an underground city for themselves. Even a healthy groundhog only lives a couple of years, so our tragic figure in this tale doesn't have long either way, but at least he gets a little prolonged memory of his life in the virtual pages you're reading here and isn't that what any of us wants? To be remembered for a while?
Halfway down I heard Melanie loudly addressing them in the yard with more urgency in her voice than normal.
"Jade! Dusty! Jade! Dust...," and then the clatter of the screen door slamming shut and then silence. It didn't sound right.
I got to the back deck and she filled me in of the situation before being asked.
"Jade got a cat I think," she said pointing across the yard near the fence line.
By the time I strode across the grass and made it to the scene, there was apparently a lull in the fight. On the ground was not a cat at all, but a pudgy brown groundhog on its back. It had a pathetic hold of Jade--the small black pit-bull mutt we saved two years ago that has never made it fully into my heart--and had its little groundhog teeth clutched on to the loose skin of her face. The bite was clearly not bothering Jade in the least. Jade had the thing's leg in her mouth. Dusty, our other dog, a blonde 70-pound retriever of some kind, was just barking and leaping about. He's always kind of been a flighty dog that gets by on his looks and runs pretty well after tennis balls.
My addition to the scene however seemed to spark something in the dogs, as if their time to kill was coming to a close and that they'd better get on with it before the tall human starts yelling again. Jade released the groundhog's foot and went for the more vital bits of neck and belly. I guess Dusty was getting in there somewhere too, it was hard to tell, but he has a soft bite and was bred to retrieve already dead things so he was the secondary concern.
I did yell, a lot, and growled their names, but the taste of blood had whipped both dogs into such a frenzy that they heard nothing but their primal wolfish instincts to make a gruesome example of this groundhog. It would serve as a message to all other yard vermin that if they dare enter the fence, this would be their fate as well. I stopped yelling.
I remember thinking of how the dogs weren't being very efficient in this slaughter. We had a much larger pit-bull a few years back that had snatched and killed one within seconds like a true professional. This in comparison was certainly amateur hour and I felt embarrassed to own dogs incapable of killing cleanly. They can't even do that right. I wasn't going to reach my hands into the fray under any circumstance, so I turned my back and walked the other direction, assuming my dogs would sooner or later finish the job.
Melanie was on the deck watching it all. I shrugged at her and she shrugged back and went inside. I meandered over to the other side of the yard where I keep my hose and started dragging it back over to the murder scene. The cheap plastic apparatus that keeps my hose coiled and out of the way is such a piece of shit that rather than feed me more of the hose as I pull on it, it invariably tilts over onto its side, completely defeating the thing's only purpose. I find myself cursing at it whenever I need it.
My concern at this point, wasn't whether they had killed the large rodent by now, but rather getting its innards all over their faces and coats. I stormed back over to the hose and yelled out for Melanie inside. "Feed this to me," I barked when she came out, pointing at the toppled hose-roller-thing.
On the spigot of the hose, there are options of what type of stream you'd like to employ. I chose jet, and as soon as I was close enough, I lasered a sharp beam of water into the faces of my deranged canines. It worked surprisingly well as both dogs were broken from their murderous trance and seemed to see me there for the first time. "Get outta here!" I screamed, spraying them further away from the victim. They reluctantly retreated back across the yard and up the deck. I gave each one a once over and rather than them being splattered with groundhog blood and licking their open wounds from the fight, each were unscathed and their fur guts-free. Jade had a small red scrape on her snout but there was no real active bleeding.
Once both of the brutes were corralled into the house and the yard was quiet again, I allowed myself a deep inhale and a sigh, before going into my barn to fetch my snow shovel and a rake. I sauntered back over to the creepy brown pile of fur and braced for the up-close rawness of death. I stopped about five feet from the critter and had a look. It was still breathing.
Fuck.
I don't own a gun. If I did, I think I could probably fire it in my yard on a Saturday afternoon in Cincinnati without much recourse from scared neighbors or nearby cops, especially once they are informed of the humanitarian reason for the shot, but alas, it was not to be. I thought about crushing its little head with a cinder block to put the little shit out of its misery, but that was so archaic and messy that it felt a bit over-the-top. I walked inside to ask Melanie what she thought. She was in the kitchen inspecting the dogs closer with latex gloves on. Each of the bastards were panting and looking pretty proud of themselves. I explained to her that it was still breathing but was also still on its back and not looking too good. She brainstormed about possibly drowning it somehow, but how the hell would we do that? I floated my cinder block suggestion out and she made a horrified face. I thought that even suggesting something so brutal might have changed her whole outlook on me forever.
So, still without much of a plan, but convinced that crushing its skull would be the least painful method and would certainly get the job done, I halted in my tracks as I looked across the yard to the body only to see that it was now upright and looking directly at me. This brought on a whole new set of questions. What now?
Melanie came out and I pointed at the little groundhog head lifted over the high grass (I'm grossly overdue to cut my grass). I decided I should get a little closer to examine the extent of its injuries. I don't know what good this could have done, but it seemed like a practical fact-finding thing to do. A few steps in its direction was enough to spook the poor injured mammal to muster up what life it did have and it limped away into the neighbor's yard.
I felt bad for the guy. When it scurried off, I could see real damage to its body around its neck and underarms. It wasn't doing well and probably wouldn't last that long out in "the wild". Sure, I live in the city, but Mt. Airy park and all of its 1,480-acre glory is only a few hundred yards from my house and plenty of predators lurk about the woodsy neighborhood at night. Maybe, and I don't know if it's worse or not than getting eaten by something bigger, the groundhog would find the closest shady secluded spot to curl up in and decide that since it can't really move well or eat well or run well, it'd be better off just to lay there and die.
This story may not be finished. It wouldn't surprise me to encounter this poor sap's corpse in a much worse state than what my dogs had done to it. Or, maybe I will be in my attic writing again and look out through its dirty windows down to the yard and see a haggard, limping brown ball of fat fur trot across the property and sneak into my barn where I am convinced a metropolis of the bastards have made an underground city for themselves. Even a healthy groundhog only lives a couple of years, so our tragic figure in this tale doesn't have long either way, but at least he gets a little prolonged memory of his life in the virtual pages you're reading here and isn't that what any of us wants? To be remembered for a while?
No comments:
Post a Comment