THE LOST DOGS OF LANGSTON.

THE LOST DOGS OF LANGSTON Entry 7. Little Dog had kind of a sad story too. I told you about him in one of the previous entries. It was three other pups belonging to Roscoe and Cinderella who came one weekend to see me. Cinderella and Roscoe barked fiercely at them to keep them away from me at first and made them lie down in formation. Then it was apparent that they wanted food and so I went for a huge sack and they all three came rushing up to me at once, three Great Pyrenees mix puppies, so I dropped the bag of food and it went scattering everywhere. Sometimes a mess is so beautiful to write about but not necessarily something you want to actually be IN. It's much prettier to read about it than to have to clean it up. I dumped the rest of the food out quickly and got away. The dogs were friendly but they were still large-ish and still strange and you never know. So I gave them some space, got on the horn to try to find someone who would want them, and the next day they disappear. I think I said that already. Also there was a dead baby rat outside one day that was left on one of the stepping stones and soon after seeing that I saw a snake with another half baby rat hanging out of his mouth, I think I smelled a dead thing under one of the bathrooms here and I think that's why the snake had the babies. He crawled under a plastic doghouse after swallowing the first baby rat and just left the second one behind. I had a feeling he would be back. I left the area and came back about thirty minutes later. Sure enough, the snake was just a-snackin' on that second baby rat! I think it got in the nest under the bathroom and somehow the parent rats had died and it got itself a meal. I like snakes. We have black racers and garter snakes and rat snakes here. I don't want to hear about any other kinds of snakes right now if you don't mind because if you don't conjure nothin' up then maybe it won't happen. I realize this is just a theory and I need to keep my eyes open. One good thing about a bunch of dogs running around is I don't think the snakes like it much and they kinda stay away from the yard because of that. So that's a good thing. Also dogs scare other things away that I need not mention here because I don't have all the facts, just a lotta hearsay and I don't know for sure so I ain't gonna go into it. What the people do is their own damn business as long as it stays away from me for the most part. I got enough dogs and cats fightin' amongst each other to have to worry with so I'm not concerned with what the people do. They can just keep on keepin' on and I have quite enough to keep myself occupied. Porch cats Tuley and Widgie began fighting with Maja and Waldo not long after Maja and Waldo arrived. When Maja got dumped here she was pregnant but we soon took care of that. I kinda hate that too but what do you do, there are just so many mouths you can feed in one day. No Jody you don't get to keep your beloved Flag unless you write a best-seller and go on Oprah, then you can have as many baby deers as you want. No Fodderwing you cannot drop acid and fly like that, that won't happen until 1947 so just quit thinkin' about it. That book depresses me soooooo much. I know it's a great book and all but it's just tooooooo depressing to even think about. So Maja. She was a huge fat cat when she came here and she got up in a tree in the front yard one day to fight with Tuley, who is somewhat smaller. Maja dropped down out of the tree about twenty feet. Later she lost a bunch of weight. I guess it was a little hard on her paws, jumping down like that with all that weight on her. I am a little concerned about the porch cats living like they do but they love to hunt and when Maja gets cold she comes in and stays in her crate. She has no problem with that and can sleep in a warm room for hours. Waldo not so much. He wants to be in when it's really cold and so he has to stay in a crate too at that point but most of the time he would rather be outside hunting. And like I said before, he's not nice so he's not gonna be a lap cat. The main reason none of the other four cats can come inside (and since Tuley and Widgie moved to the garage, there has been peace in the valley since they don't fight with Maja and Waldo anymore) is Princess Kitty. She has no claws on her front feet. We found her that way, I didn't have declawing surgery done on her, I have never done that with a cat. She was just that way when we found her and she was also spayed. No microchip either. I have no idea where she came from and there were no Cat Missing signs so she just stayed with us. I have a feeling someone died and she got out of the house but I don't know who it was. I came here with Lily Belle and Stevie and Princess Kitty and thought retirement was gonna be a smooth sailing deal, floating down a peaceful stream with my two dogs and my cat. Would have been nice I suppose, but I have learned an awful lot about dogs and cats about myself from all the other ones. The main thing I've learned is that if they won't come to you, they won't come. You have to give up at that point. I did that with Angelo and then he came to me. I was feeding him for several weeks. I would see a black dog over at the neighbors' house and he would be running around their yard playing with a piece of trash. It made my heart want to bust into a trillion pieces to see that because it was a black dog like my Tinky and it was playing the way my Tinky played. It was cold outside. The dog did not go inside with the neighbors' other dog, I noticed. I went out to feed it, regular dog food, butter, ham, corn pone, salmon, whatever was left over from that week's food or whatever I could spare. Hot dogs. That dog ate fourteen hot dogs one day. Hebrew Nationals. I ain't feedin' no dog no bad karma hot dog. All there is to it. Anyway the black dog kept coming to the fence for hot dogs whenever it took a notion to do so. I would be out in the cold afternoon yard just puttering around trying to catch a glimpse of it through the cracks in the fence. Maybe it was there, maybe it wasn't. Some days I don't know where it went. But a day or two later it woudl be back wanting more hot dogs. There is a pylon sitting in my yard with a bunch of other pylons, they're waiting to be put under my house as part of the foundation work. One of them is close enough to the fence where I can stand up on it and look over. Sometimes I would do that and there Black Dog would be. I started calling him Pretty Boy. He was very fearsome and looked like a small black wolf with maybe yellow eyes and very pointy ears. Terrifying dog when you're trying to get to your mailbox. I started carrying hot dogs with me to the mailbox even. It's very close to the road and pretty far from the house and I have to go through two gates to get to it now. A lot of people carry guns around here. It's just a thing people do. Some of them would feel like they had just lost a leg if they couldn't carry their gun. Well I guess that's one way to do it. But really, am I going to carry a gun out to the mailbox to shoot a dog with? Any day, ever, at all? I think I would probably just let myself get bitten first, or just run really damn fast and get into the fence and then call the police to come "take care" of it. I would always wonder, what is that dog going to do, that black dog? Because you never know what a dog is going to do unless you know the dog. Still and all I'm not going to let an animal go hungry, if I can possibly do anything about it. So I put an old plastic doghouse barn thingy out there at the corner of the fence and a pan of dog food in there. A pan of water. I would check every so often to see if Black Dog/Pretty Boy had been to get the food. Sometimes he, or something, had. This went on for weeks. Finally the spring weather was just getting here and that means storms. The Tuesday before a big storm system was headed here, my friend was here to help me take a big huge air conditioning unit out of a tiny room. That room used to be a butler's pantry and there was an open space with a shelf where they used to bring the food from the outdoor kitchen. Back when this house was first built, the kitchen was far from the house so that if it burned, they would only have to build a new kitchen because the house proper would stay safe. Stay safe! How many times have I said that this year...stay safe! Well do it! Well so it was March 16 and the moon was tin Taurus which means an exaltation which means a really good day. And my friend was working with the air conditioner and I had gone out into the driveway to see if Pretty Boy was there for some reason and I think I had food with me but this time he came into the gate and his ears were back and he came up to me and let me pet him!!!! This hadn't happened before. So I guessed that I was supposed to close and lock the gates which I did. And he came in. And so here he has been ever since and he doesn't want to leave my side, I don't think he wants to run off like Stevie Ray always did (Stevie Ray incidentally is being boarded...how much board would a Bordenese board if a Bordenese could board board, haha) (yes and also when I go out to water the yard I keep myself going sometimes by sneering Wahhh-ter yoooo dooooo-innnnggg.......) (also I am known to shout Two bits! Four bits! Six bits, a dollar! All for me, stand up and holler! And then I shout, Yaaaaaayyyy!) (i attribute these things to the pandemic, I probably wouldn't do them otherwise, all the human contact I have had is short mostly masked visits with my mother, especially at first, when most of the time we sat outside to have a cold drank or whatnot and then when it got colder we were more accustomed to how to deal so we very tentatively sat inside the house for a short while to have refreshments and then she'd put her mask back on and so would I and she would go home) (so mostly I have been at home for a year and I think there was one other place I went, oh yes to a recording studio to record a song for one brief afternoon and then once to a doctor visit for something but I was super paranoid about it and asked for the first morning appointment so I wouldn't have to deal with the waiting room, as it was there was only one other person there and he was masked) (YES I'M VERY PARANOID, NOT JUST ABOUT THIS VIRUS BUT ABOUT MOST THINGS, NOT REALLY ASKING FOR FORGIVENESS FOR THIS HERE, JUST GIVING IT PLENTY SPACE LIKE THEY SAY TO DO ON CALM DOT COM) no I'm not shouting I'm just typing in all caps. But Angelo really is the most marvellous dog. And I"ll tell you something too, during all the time that I was trying to figure out when to feel him which was when I saw him, of course, or to lure him over with the hot dogs, and MOther was saying You're just luring him in and I'm saying Mama I'm not going to let an animal starve because I guess I am like the ladies inthe Depression who fed the hobos, they would draw a picture of a cat face outside the houses of the nice ladies who would give out food to strangers and i guess the dogs and cats who get dumped here (did I remind you that I also have been writing to senator and reps of Alabama to ask them to do something about the legislation to spay and neuter dogs and cats and lately I'm getting very personal with them and telling them how it really is here, that maybe I have time to do the laundry and/or take a bath but it takes a lot of planning and sometimes by the time I get to the end of the day I don't feel like taking the bath anyway and am ready to drop) have a similar system for me, maybe they draw a picture of a cassowary face or something but please god don't send any more. The moral dilemma here is something I'll discuss in the next post about how to think about animals and what to do about them. And it is a moral dilemma and every other kind of dilemma but what I was going to say is, when I'd be out at dusk trying to gauge whether Black Dog/Pretty Boy/Angelo was there, sometimes I'd step up on that pylon and look over the fence and there he'd be! Like he was monitoring me! I'll never forget the look in his eyes. And I would say I'm gonna go get your hot dogs, just wait right here, just wait a minute I'll be right back. Just hang tight. And I would go get whatever I had, sometimes it was prosciutto panini, sometimes it was just ham, I'm not vegetarian but that's for the next chapter...so don't let me get ahead of myself just yet... ...like we were on the same timer. Me and Angelo. And now we seem to be on the same timer because we really enjoy walking through the yard together having our daily cocktail which is a small bag of boom chicka pop popcorn, the little purple individual bags, and he gets a few pieces. And he follows me everywhere I go and it's been a really long time since a dog did that.