In All The World Only One

“Ahtah, Johnny Dog don’t you dare, put that down right now!”

“Quanah, you heard me.”

“Jimmy, No.”

“Quanah Parker!”

“Bea Bea, come ‘ere girl.”

“Christ what a Goddamn menagerie this is.” I thought to myself.

“Bebes,” I said addressing all of them. “You can’t have dead things! We’ve been over this.”

And with a jolt I took the perfectly vertical pitchfork from of the bail of bright green alfalfa, where it temporary made its home, scooped up the little lifeless carcass of a slain rat and carried it to the wall where property line meets street. The small decomposing brown body stunk to high Heaven and rested precariously on the end of two pointed tines, flies swarmed over its mauled little head relentlessly and the dog’s mouths drooled from the Riverside heat and from their dashed desires.

My dogs LOVE dead things - lizards, mice, rats, squirrels, bunnies, opossums, frogs, birds and even skunks. They love not only to chase and catch them, and to play with their destroyed bodies, but they love the actual act of killing them too.

I’ve watched them, on several occasions delight in the taking of life o’ vermin. I’ve watched my Australian cattle dog, the most ferocious of the group, in blissful rapture as he meticulously devoured a nest of baby rabbits. The rabbits were only a few weeks old and living in a comfortable little pile of hay in my father’s horse trailer. And as my dad reached for the pitchfork, just as I did today, he yelled for the dog. Johnny Dog (an all black dog, named after Mr. Cash) sat at the foot of the trailer and readied himself for action. One by one my father and my loveable dog played a game of bloody catch. My dad tossed the baby bunnies slowly into the air and my dog (a well practiced catcher) snapped up, mangled, and then ate each little lightly fuzzed body. The other dogs, more gentle in nature (border collies are thinking dogs and not so vicious as the direct decedents of dingos), stood in awe watching this, and when every last rabbit was devoured and a pile of a few bones and fluff lay at Johnny’s paws they had a new found respect, or perhaps fear for ol’ Johnny Boy.

I tossed the rat over the vine covered chain link fence as I did almost daily with lizards only a few short months ago, and as the pitchfork rose into the air Quanah let out one last ditch attempt bark in his busy little high pitched, high strung voice, that I knew was meant to emote annoyance. For a dog who thinks he rules the world and who has just had the opposite demonstrated, annoyance is among the most graceful of rebellions I suppose. Johnny was more forceful in his anger and jumped to lightly bite my hand, and as I knew it must have been his kill in the first place I stopped to pet/console him. He barked at me and stared into my eyes with his glossy brown pools of bitterness, which have a tendency to bulge when excited. He made it clear that he did not appreciate my gesture, but after a sufficient amount of ear rubbing and cooing with my face close to his, he forgave me.

I guess if the dead things didn’t smell so bad and if I didn’t think they would end up making the dogs ill, I would let them have them to bat around and chew on for a while, like a mother would let a baby teethe on its dirty little shoes, (like they seem to always love to attempt trying) if only she didn’t fear the “germs” would in some way hurt the child. Its hard to say, perhaps in this “sanitized for your protection” kind of world the instinct to over react to anything deemed “dirty” just can’t be avoided, despite the pleasure it may bring. Or on the other hand maybe it is a good thing that there is someone (with or without a pitch fork) to dispose of those dead and dying rats, who bring only disease and stench.

Shit, Lord knows I could use someone to police my attempts at holding on to the dead.