Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away....

[sasha]

 
 
From an ancient journal entry of mine, posted in solidarity with a similar experience saw describes in "Omicron Jam... viewtopic.php?f=99&p=216288#p216284


Oct 18,1994 - Tue

...Since it was yet another lovely day, I tore myself from the keyboard shortly before noon and suited up for a hike. I've had designs on several places in and around Northfield MA, but I was getting too late a start for them - so I eventually decided upon a return visit to Benson Cemetery in Richmond, arriving there a little before 1:00. Some of the larger trees have been cut, but it's still likely to be a forbidding spot on an appropriately gray, late-November day. Somewhat paradoxically, the glorious weather diminished the number of photo ops here; I think I found one peculiarly disturbing image of skewed, backlighted headstones. By 1:30 I was sated and a bit restless, so I struck out along the eastern trail.

The trail first descends slightly to a beaver pond, then proceeds seriously uphill to the crest of a long, north-south ridge, part of the same masiff that includes Tully Mountain in Orange, MA, and The Ledges in Troy, NH. The climb was moderately strenuous, but my pace was slow enough so that I was getting enough to breathe.

Further on, the trail splits, or joins with a north-south traversal of the ridge. On my last visit, I'd gone north, so today I went south. There was just the hint of a vista, but it was blocked by the foliage, so my attention was kept focussed upon my immediate surroundings. I plodded happily along for a couple of miles, neither heading uphill or downhill, but riding he swells of the ridge like a boat on moderate seas.

The air is luminous this time of year; there's haze, but it's not the same as the nasty, oppressive moisture of late June and most of July. It's thinner, and gives the sunlight a bold accent. When it strikes the canopy, the leaves almost flouresce, so the impression isn't so much of walking in shade as of walking through a faintly glowing tunnel. The ridge is distant enough from pavement to prevent the sounds of traffic from sullying the quiet music of the woods, the way that concert-goers' shuffling and coughing mar the subtler passages of man-made music. The sunnier patches still feature the sounds of insects, the last of their kind, probably, skeleton crews left behind to decommission the food-producing factories which sustained them throughout the summer. As one leaves these occasional open areas behind and returns to the depths of the woods, their buzzing recedes noticeably into the background, underscoring their isolation, their status as insect-populated islands within a larger ocean no longer hospitable to them.

The trail split again, unexpectedly this time. Chagrined with having to make a decision, I opted to go right (west), on the chance that it might bring me back to the road to the cemetery. Instead, the road broadened about a quarter-mile from there, and a house came into view. I'd broken through to somewhere.

There was a woman walking around the yard; I raised my hand in a conciliatory wave, and kept on. A large golden retriever saw me and began running toward me, barking ferociously. His bark was not a "Who goes there?" bark; it was a "Get the hell out here!" bark, and I intended to oblige him. However, he didn't stop ten or fifteen off and keep up the refrain, the way they usually do when they just want to chase you off; he kept on coming. I began to think I might be in trouble. It was becoming all too clear that this was, in fact, an "I'm going to kick your ass" bark. I was wearing shorts, and my legs felt vulnerable, but I was wearing two shirts. On his final approach I put my arm out in front, to protect me, and he took it.

"Buddy," the woman called. "Here, Buddy." She might have been calling him in to dinner.

Buddy stood blocking my way, still barking savagely. "Easy," I said, not moving. "Easy, boy." After a moment or so, his barking started losing conviction, the way it does when they're satisfied that they've had their say, and are starting to forget what all the commotion was about to begin with.

I rolled my sleeve back and looked at my arm.

Blood.

Shit, I thought. I don't need this today.

The woman had turned away and was walking toward the front of the house; she apparently had no interest in whether or not her animal had inflicted any damage. "Excuse me," I said, walking after her, "but I've been bitten. I wonder if I could wash this off?"

She looked at me as though I'd just asked her for money to buy rotgut. "There's a faucet over on the side of the house," she said, clearly annoyed at this intrusion into her and Buddy's private affairs. I ran cold water over my arm, and milked the wound, which was beginning to bleed freely. My camera bag kept slipping and getting in the way, and I was starting to get pissed.

The woman was tending to more important matters, like arranging little wooden kitties in the garden, and when I returned to the driveway, Buddy ran up to me again. This time he smiled, and sat at my feet, offering his head to my hand for stroking. As much as I wanted to grab his tongue, rip it out of his throat, and stuff it down the woman's, I patted his face, and he leaned against my leg in bliss.

"This is a little awkward," I began, "but I have been bitten, and..."

"He's not my dog," she said, a little too quickly. "I don't live here."

("Zat iss not my dog...")

I stared at her. "You know his name, though."

She stared back. "Yes, he lives here. I don't."

Enlightened by this flood of information, I surmised that she was house sitting or something. A tricycle in the driveway said that children lived here; but her age made it unlikely that they were hers. She was old enough to have been their grandmother.

An old man appeared from around the corner of the house.

"I'm sure he's had all his shots."

Assuming she was referring to the dog, and not the old man, I nonetheless did not find this new data particularly reassuring. Frustrated by her callous irresponsibility, unsure what information I needed, and unsure how to get it without a nasty confrontation, I just left. She and Buddy and her companion didn't even watch me go.

The blood was running down my arm by now, but I was becoming increasingly furious, which no doubt helped me double-time it back to the car. I spent the journey telling her off eloquently and frequently, each time perfecting the timing and delivery, careful to use the word "fuck" once, and only once, and careful to place it where it would have maximum effect, the way Buddy Rich would lay off the cymbals until the climax of one of his volcanic solos. I don't remember much else about the return trip other than concern for the hour, and whether or not I'd be able to make it to the clinic before they closed.

Somehow, I got to the car in under an hour, and to the clinic by 4:00. Laurie didn't even recognize me, as I was several days distant from a comb, and attired in a distinctly ursine fashion. She gave me over to an adorable little nurse who cleaned up the wound for Doctor Berube to examine, who then explained the procedure. They needed specific information about the dog, so it would be necessary to locate the owner. At the time, I wasn't even sure where the attack had occurred, although I had an idea. It was a matter for the police, she said. That notion suited me just fine.

The nurse then dressed the wound, gave me a tetanus shot, and described the drill for rabies shots. It sounds tedious, but not as horrific as scuttlebutt has traditionally had it. Standard procedure also dictates that the dog's owner produce a rabies certificate. In the meantime, the animal is quarantined and carefully observed for signs of the disease. Even if the animal is current, it's confined to quarters for a minimum of 10 days. Grimly satisfied that Mrs. Ice Bitch was going to be receiving another unwelcome visitor, this one arriving, not on foot, but in an automobile with a blue strobe light on top, I left the clinic to report the incident to the Fitzwilliam police.

But when I described to the officer at the duty desk how I had reached the locatlion I'd been bitten, he said that in all liklihood I'd been in Richmond, and out of their jurisdiction. Richmond does not have a full-time police force, and it might be difficult for me to contact them; but Fitzwilliam routinely works with them, and could relay the information to them for me.

Fine with me.

In the meantime, it would be helpful if I could better pinpoint the place so the Richmond police could get there by more conventional means, and to get the owner's name.

I left the station a little after 5:00 and took a drive down the highway. The house was located where I thought, on a piece of dirt road that parallels Route 119, and which might have been the main road at some point in the past. There were two mailboxes at the end of the road, but neither had any writing on them. Blanks, both. And there, in front of the house, was my buddy Buddy, who came charging viciously out to greet me, his deep throaty bark too vividly familiar. This time, though, I was armored in steel and ABS. Were it not for for the fact that the Board of Health needs intact brain tissue from rabies-suspected animals in order to make their diagnosis, I would have happily driven over his head, and that of the woman, as well.

One hell of a way to kick off a vacation...

[mnaz]

Some people are unbelievably callous. Reading this made me angry. Well-written, as usual. Held me right to the end.

To be continued?

[sasha]

thanks - appreciate the review. TBC? I've already posted a few bits & pieces from those journals - many more are painful cries from the heart......

[mnaz]

I was just curious if there was any "official" resolution to this story, Board of Health-wise. Probably not, I'm guessing, like most things in life.

[saw]

Some people should not be able to own dogs ( or care for them )
There needs to a stupidly test or something to determine if one is truly a thoughtless moron
Similar to the piece I just posted....as you said
the lack of responsibly and regard for others can be staggering at times
no apology....no nothin"

[sasha]

No real resolution - I think I remember getting a call from the Richmond police (this was almost 30 years ago) to let me know the dog had a valid rabies cert. Obviously I didn't get ill, and I certainly never hiked that way again.

It's amazing to me that anyone could be so self-absorbed as not to give a single shit about the possibility that an animal under their charge may have transmitted a disease with a 100% fatality rate - and yet one look around me today says the more things change, the more they stay the same. Masks? No mask for me, infringes upon my freedom. No leash, either - infringes upon my dog's. Your freedom to live ain't my concern.

(In all honesty, I often let Kane run free on the rail trail, and we occasionally met other hikers - but he was such a pathological goofball, that the worst damage he ever inflicted was to deliver a good licking - though once he accidentally scratched someone with a stick he was showing off.)