VERMIN
By Brian Dear
So I'm taking the English Bull Terrier out for
his morning walk, which lately has been on a paved trail that runs along
an interstate so is
quite noisy but worse, has bicyclists who whiz by at breakneck speed
(my neck, their speed) in true inconsiderate, I am a bicyclist and I
will maintain my speed no matter what even through stop signs and red
lights so surely I won't slow down for you and your dog fashion. So a
dog walker on this path must be on the watch both back and front for
bikers who would rather run into you just to make the point that this
is a bike path not a pedestrian path the way some car drivers need to
point out that they're on a road for cars not a road for bikes. But anyway.
So we're on our walk (which is more of a "pull", where the
English Bull Terrier pulls his owner along with great strength and determination),
and there are only a few bikes this morning, and I manage to get the
English Bull Terrier to perform his business, which lately has been followed
by his kicking up dust and dirt and grass and leaves and anything else,
for purposes of either a) cleaning his four paws or I suspect more likely
b) covering the "product" his business just produced. Anyways,
that out of the way, we turn to go back down the path on our way home.
Post-business English Bull Terriers will heel, look up to you lovingly,
smile, wag their tail, and be of general good and obedient cheer, which
is a pleasant thing, and makes the walk a fun experience. At all-too-brief
but cherished times of cooperation like this, it's often fun to play
with the English Bull Terrier by making him stop, then say, "on
you mark, get set, go!" and take off like you're running the 100-meter
dash in the Olympics. The English Bull Terrier enjoys this greatly and
lets you have the lead for about 0.4 seconds after which time he passes
you with great euphoric dog leaps, where he spends more time in the air
than on the ground, and manages to fly out in front of his owner at least
to the point where his short leash loses all of its slack, at which point
the chain choke collar snaps tight, choking the poor darting English
Bull Terrier to a near stop as his owner tries, gasping, to catch up.
At which point both dog and owner stop, and then do it all over again
for another 25 yards. Great fun is had by
all. Well, usually.
This note
is about vermin. Yes, vermin. Something which I had not
been obsessed by until today. See, during one of our running dashes
this morning,
the English Bull Terrier manages, how I have yet to figure
out, to notice, then acquire the target for, an object along the
side of the
paved
path
while we are at running at full speed. He sees this object,
heads toward it, and in a true Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
moment, he
scoops
up the object into his mouth and slams on the breaks of his
four
paws and
comes to a stop. Being an English Bull Terrier, whose mission
in life is to Be Mischevious and Disobedient As Much Of The Time
As Possible,
knowing that Forgiveness is much easier than Permission,
he knows that
this object is a particular kind of object that the owner
will a) not like and b) will not want the English Bull Terrier to
possess. So,
in true English Bull Terrier fashion, the mission is to swallow
such illegal
objects before a) thinking about the ramifications of such
an act and before b) the owner has a chance to remove object
from English
Bull
Terrier's mouth. Problem is, this object is big, about the
size
of a shoe. And
unfortunately, for the English Bull Terrier, was lying
in such an orientation that in the process of scooping the object up
into
its mouth, the object
did not enter mouth lengthwise, which would have been the
preferable
method for swallowing, but rather, perpendicularly to the
dog's muzzle, meaning, the dog bit the center of the long object
and since the object
was long, a nontrivial portion of object stuck out from
the right side of dog's mouth as well as left side of dog's mouth.
During
instances
such as this, an English Bull Terrier's mind is focused
on one objective:
swallow the illegal object and deal with the consequences
later. But this object is large and the English Bull Terrier realizes
that he
doesn't have the best of grips in his mouth, so he sort of
juggles
the object
in his mouth for a split second, in order to get a better
hold of it with his rear molars, molars which, by the way, could
cut and crush
diamond and titanium, I swear. All of this activity -- from
running
along happily
to finding then scooping then biting then juggling object
--- has happened in less than one second. At this point the owner
of the English
Bull
Terrier realizes that the dog has found something and has
placed
it in its mouth. Just what that something might be will take
the owner another
few seconds to figure out, but for now it is certain that
the owner must
secure the dog, bend down, and attempt to remove the object
from the dog's mouth before the dog achieves his mission in life.
So owner
bends
down and grabs dog's head and grabs dog's muzzle and grabs
dog's top row of teeth and with other hand grabs dog's lower
jaw and attempts
to force open mouth to release object, which, to the owner's
horror, is
now seen to be one large, very dead, very stiff, very,
very, hard, thankfully aroma-free, but no-doubt germ-laden, DEAD RAT.
We are
talking
about a
large DEAD RAT, the king of all vermin, verily. In the
mouth
of my English Bull Terrier. This RAT is as long as a shoe, and
sticking out
of the
left side of my dog's mouth is a STIFF TAIL of a DEAD RAT,
along
with STIFF FEET OF REAR LEGS of a DEAD RAT. Owner of dog now
tries to remove
the DEAD RAT from the dog's mouth and the dog knows he
is bad and that he has put into his mouth an object which is Bad, but
he must, he must swallow the object --- it is his mission. So as
the owner attempts
to remove the DEAD RAT from the dog's mouth, the dog instinctively?
deliberately?
bears his jaw down on the object within his mouth, quite
swiftly
and
efficiently BREAKING THE DEAD RAT IN TWO, right down the
middle, so that now there are two pieces of DEAD RAT to deal with.
Fortunately,
for owner,
and unfortunately, for dog, this turns out to be advantageous,
because
now the owner has the dog's jaw open and the two halves
of the DEAD RAT are loose within his mouth, making it easier for the
owner
to quickly
grab the tail half of the DEAD RAT and pull it out and
to the left, and
then grab the head end (quite squished -- obviously this
RAT had been HIT by a MOVING VEHICLE at a HIGH rate of speed causing
a SEVERE
SQUISHING
CONDITION to occur) and rapidly toss it over to the right.
Fortunately, too, for owner (and dog, though he would not agree),
the hardness
and stiffness of this DEAD RAT made it such that a) there were
no oozing liquids, b) no blood, c) no guts, d) no creeping, crawling
maggots
or other parasitical creatures to deal with. This was one
dry,
hard,
DEAD
RAT, which meant that when English Bull Terrier broke DEAD
RAT in half in its mouth, DEAD RAT broke into two nice solid
pieces, which
meant
that there wasn't any gooey third piece still swirling
around in the mouth or on the tongue or between the teeth of English
Bull
Terrier.
Nor did it mean that owner of English Bull Terrier had
any gooey, greasy,
sticky, oozy, germ-infested, disease-ridden, plague-carrier
gunk on his hands or fingers to deal with. So now, tail half
of DEAD RAT
sits
right
smack dab in the middle of the paved path, waiting for
some biker to come along and ride over it, and hopefully, in the process,
kick
it
up into the gears or spokes of the wheel, where it gets
stuck,
shatters into a million pieces, all flying up and into the
little black goretex
biker shorts that every loser biker wears so that the biker
will catch the plague and die, or at least, have to slow down,
perhaps even
stop,
to remove, in a panic, said million splintering pieces
of tail half of
DEAD RAT. Head half of DEAD RAT sits along side the path,
where it will no doubt remain until some other dog comes along and
scoops
it
up and
swallows before the dog's owner knows what evil deed has
just been done. So now, owner and English Bull Terrier walk back
to car,
owner now deeply
and obsessively conscious of all surfaces that must be
touched in order to enter locked car, put English Bull Terrier in locked
car,
and then
drive home: leash, pants pocket, car keys, door handles,
car seats, steering wheel, emergency brake release, trasnsmission
lever,
seats,
steering
wheel, emergency brake release, trasnsmission lever, and
on
and on. So many surfaces to be cleaned, rinsed, fumigated, detoxified,
deorganicized,
sterilized. Owner gets home, has to touch more surfaces
(lock of
door of house, door handle of door, light switch, and on and
on) before locking
dog up in crate and dashing for sink, to dispense large
amounts of
soap, and proceed to wash hands for several hours before
going to work. The
question is --- does soap and hot water really do the job?
What about my keyboard? Are there microscopic DEAD RAT BITS now
on my keyboard?
Will I ever be free of that DEAD RAT? Such is today's obsession.
Meanwhile,
English Bull Terrier sleeps gently back home in his crate,
no doubt thinking about how for one brief shining moment he had
the Mother
of All No-No's
in his mouth.
Originally posted in the WELL's obsess.ind conference,
September 1998
