Strays     

            It was late October in Connecticut. A freezing downpour washed the black asphalt street in front of the small town bar. I sat gazing into the watery darkness, alone as usual.  Across the rain drenched roadway was the town park, five acres of grass, giant elm trees and tonight, an ankle deep covering of cold water. 

            I had been in that battered old pub for a half hour, quietly nursing a glass of straight bourbon, before my thoughtful stare finally focused on a medium sized lump in a grassy puddle 100 feet away.  For another 10 minutes I looked out through the tear streaked windowpane trying to decide if the lump was an animal or just a wet and inanimate something.

            The night before a German shepherd looking mongrel had come into the bar begging for potato chips. He was mangy and starving and just the size of the lump in question.  Why would a dog lie in a cold puddle in the freezing rain, I asked myself. The answer was simple: either it wasn’t a dog, or if it was, he was too weak to get up.

            The shrapnel wound in my right shoulder ached all the way down to my fingers. I didn’t want to go out in that storm. Anyway it wasn’t my dog, it wasn’t anybody’s dog. it was just a stray, a lonely drifter on a cold night in the rain.  So am I, I thought, as I tossed down what was left of the bourbon and headed out the door.

            He was lying in three inches of water. When I touched him he didn’t move. I thought he was dead.  I put my hands around his chest and hoisted him to his feet. He stood unsteadily in the puddle, his head hung like a weight at the end of his neck.  Half of his body was covered with mange. His floppy ears were just hairless pieces of flesh dotted with open sores.  “Come on,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t have to carry his infected carcass to shelter.

            His tail wagged once and he plodded weakly after me. I led him to an alcove next to the bar where he lay on the cold cement and closed his eyes.  A block away I could see the lights of a late night convenience store.  It was still open.

            The race type exhausts on my old Harley Davidson rattled the windows in the bar. The barmaid looked out at me as I rode away.  I bought three cans of Alpo and stuffed them into my leather coat.  I was wet and ugly. The clerk looked relieved as I left.

            The barmaid opened the cans for me and said the dog’s name was Shep.  She told me he was about a year old and that his owner had gone to Germany and left him on the street.

            He ate all three cans with an awe inspiring singleness of purpose. I wanted to pet him, but he smelled like death and looked even worse.  “Good luck,” I said, then got on my bike and rode away.

            The next day I got a job driving a dump truck for a small paving company. As I hauled a load of gravel through the center of town I saw him standing on the sidewalk near the bar. I yelled to him and thought I saw his tail wag. It made me feel good.  After work I bought three more cans of Alpo and a cheeseburger. My friend and I ate dinner together on the sidewalk. He finished his first.

            The next night, when I brought his food, he welcomed me with wild enthusiasm. Now and then his malnourished legs would buckle and he would fall to the pavement.  Humans had deserted him and kicked him and chased him with firecrackers and dirt bikes, but now he had a friend and his appreciation was more than obvious.  I didn’t see him the next day as I hauled load after load up the main street past the bar. I wondered if someone had taken him home.  After work I parked the black Harley on the street and walked down the sidewalk looking for him. I was afraid of what I would find.      He was lying on his side in an alley nearby. His tongue hung out in the dirt and only the tip of his tail moved when he saw me.  “Is that your dog?” a voice said behind me.

            “No,” I said turning to find the sneering fat face of the man who owned the bar.

            “Well, if you want him, get him out of here or I’ll have somebody shoot him.”

            My face turned red as I felt my temper slip away. “What’s your problem buddy?” I growled.

            “I don’t like animals or little kids,” he said, then walked away.

            The local veterinarian was still at his office so I borrowed a pickup truck from my employer and loaded the limp mongrel into the cab.

            “Is this your dog?” the vet asked after checking the pitiful specimen that lay helplessly on his examining table.

            “No,” I said, “he’s just a stray.”

            “He’s got the beginnings of distemper,” the vet said sadly, “if he doesn’t have a home, the kindest thing we can do is put him out of his misery.”

            I put my hand on the dog’s shoulder. His mangy tail thumped weakly against the stainless steel table.  “He’s got a home,” I said.

            For the next three nights and two days Shep lay on his side in my apartment. My roommate and I spent hours putting water in his mouth and trying to get him to swallow a few scrambled eggs. He couldn’t do it, but whenever I touched him, his tail would wag slightly at the very tip. At about 10 a.m. on the third day, I went home to open the apartment for the telephone installer. As I stepped through the door, I was nearly flattened by a black mass of  jumping, wiggling mutt.           That was 1973. Since then, the mangy starving cur that nearly died in my living room has grown into an 80 pound block of solid muscle with a massive chest and a super thick coat of shiny black fur.  Many times, when loneliness and depression have nearly gotten the best of me, he has returned my favor by showering me with his unbridled friendship till I had no choice but to smile and trade my melancholy for a fast game of fetch the stick.

            Strays come in all types. Some, like the “Old Man,” an ancient Golden Retriever we found battered and bloody on Dixie Highway, only want a safe place to live out what time they have left; while others need a chance to grow some before they face the harsh laws of nature.

            Orville Wright didn’t stand a chance on the ground. He was a meal looking for a place to be eaten.  He had apparently fallen out of his nest with only the feathers on his back; and even they were few and still fluffy.

            Shep spotted him first, hopping frantically across my front yard.  “Ah,” the 80 pound mongrel must have thought, “a ball that throws itself.”

            I cornered the little guy in a hedge across the street. He hopped to and fro like a plucked parakeet on a power pogo stick. I finally got a hand on him and after vainly searching the nearby trees for his nest, sadly concluded that Orville’s only hope for survival was a massive dose of good luck, and me.

            Baby birds only eat one meal a day, but it continues from dawn till dark. Orville put away huge amounts of Shep’s Kennel Ration dumped into his open mouth on the end of a small, metal fingernail file. Each feeding was followed by a squirt of water from a plastic eye drop bottle.  At the time of this undertaking I was sharing a house with two other Harley Davidson freaks, my old friend Ed Drew and a Caucasian version of Bruce Lee named Gary Hoover. They laughed at me and insinuated that such a wanton display of kindness was an insult to their masculinity.

            One day I had to leave Orville alone and unfed for almost 12 hours.  When I returned, I immediately put a chunk of food on the nail file and offered it to what I thought would be a ravenous baby mockingbird.  He wasn’t interested.

            “I wonder what’s wrong with Orville?” I said to no one in particular.  “He won’t eat anything.”

            Ed Drew looked up from his Easyriders magazine. “Yeah, well,” he said gruffly, “we already fed him. Hell, he would have starved waiting for you.

            ”Day by day Orville became bigger and stronger and louder. His appearance changed from that of an open beak on legs to something similar to a Mr. Potato Head with feathers. He got so round and fat that he looked more like the Hindenburg than a mockingbird.  As dissimilar as we were, Orville and I did have one thing in common, neither of us could fly. I decided it was about time for one of us to learn.

            Every day I would take my fat feathered friend out to the backyard for a few minutes of airborne training. I soon found out from whence came the expression “bird brain.”

            Orville was a natural born eater, but flying was definitely for the birds. And, since he considered himself the offspring of an awkward170 pound earth bound humanoid, his approach to flight school was, shall we say, less than enthusiastic.  The first lesson ended in complete failure. I had cupped Orville in my hand and gently catapulted him skyward to an altitude of about seven feet expecting him to flutter slowly back to earth. He didn’t.  He dropped like a stone. “Pull out, pull out,” I shouted, but it was too late. Orville’s pudgy fuselage bounced twice then landed nose down in the new, mowed grass.

            After several days and countless crashes the porky little kamikaze began to open his wings just above ground zero. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.  I had to start closing the back door during flight practice or Orville would hit the ground then make a mad dash for the house. I am convinced that somewhere in his family tree nests a wayward ancestor whose virtue had been compromised by a silver tongued homing pigeon with an eye for a well turned mockingbird leg.

            After several weeks of daily lessons he was doing quite well. I would toss him into the air and he would fly the length of the yard or land in a nearby tree, in which case he would crash earthward through two or three layers of branches, fluttering wildly, before gaining a toehold.  On one of his more spectacular flights he traveled over the fence, across the neighbor’s yard and onto their clothesline. He made a perfect landing, grabbed the white plastic rope and stood upright for about five tenths of a second. Then, suddenly, his bony feet lost their perch on the slippery line. He nosed over 180 degrees and hung upside down like a little gray baby shoe waiting to dry. A group of grown mockingbirds, on a phone wire nearby, turned away in disgust.

                        Another lesson that must be learned by any bird intent of surviving in the wild is how to catch and eat bugs.  After having spent several years living on a motorcycle I was more than qualified to teach this course.  Orville preferred dog food for two reasons. First, it tasted better; and, second, it didn’t run out of his mouth before he could swallow it. 

            Finally, after his flying and bug catching had gotten to a point of reasonable proficiency, I started leaving him out during the day and then letting him in at night.  He was never difficult to find in the evening. Just after sunset he would appear at the glass door to the patio and jump up and down while peeping furiously. I would slide open the door and Orville would hop across the kitchen floor while Shep’s monstrous nose followed curiously only inches behind.

            Eventually he grew long tail feathers and more independent. He began sleeping in the neighbor’s tree at night and coming in only once or twice a week, then not at all.  I don’t live in that house any more, but whenever I think of the place I remember Orville and wonder if he remembers me.

            In most cases, when a stray finally finds a home, it is because it is cute and cuddly. Ed is an exception to this rule.

            “Is that a wild looking bug, or what?” I asked my friend, Lynn, as I watched Ed the scorpion crawl around on the pieces of rotten wood I had stacked in his cage.  “He’s not a bug,” she said, never having learned to accept my second grade terminology. “He’s an arachnid.”

            “Yeah,” I said defensively, “but he’s still a bug.”

            “What is your definition of the word bug, Kirkup?”             “Bug,” I said studiously, quoting by memory from my imaginary copy of Joe Kirkup’s dictionary of gross generalizations. “(1) Any of the various creepy critters whose very mention produces an uncomfortable feeling upon the epidermis. (2) As in, `Ugh, a bug.’”

            Ed is definitely a creepy critter, but at the same time he is fascinating and even a little funny. He looks like the central figure in a Z grade Japanese horror movie; The Attack of the Purple Arachnid starring Ed (magnified 500 times) and Fu Yu Tu as the dauntless Oriental from Orkin.

            Contrary to popular opinion scorpions do have several good points probably the most important of which is that they don’t fly. Picture this: flying scorpions, egad.  They also don’t make a lot of noise like crickets or journalists.  Maybe that’s not a good point, hmmmm.  Anyway, they have the dubious distinction of being one of the oldest unchanged creatures. All the time we have spent evolving, they have spent staying the same. This fact gives us some insight as to the state of Mother Nature’s aesthetic perception.

            Ed was not really a stray. Actually he had made himself at home in the large plywood box where I kept my yard tools. I discovered him one day by accident. It was a reassuring experience for me; if my heart was ever to malfunction it would have been then.  After recovering from my initial shock I gave the problem of Ed some serious consideration and narrowed the choices of action down to three.  One, I could take the easy way out and leave him where he was, with my yard tools for furniture. Two, I could do the typically homo sapien thing and take his life, simple as it might be or, three, I could try to capture the tough little octopod and keep him for a pet. I opted for the latter.    

            Ed the scorpion is not only well armed, but reasonably fast. It took about 15 minutes of careful prodding to herd him into an empty, one gallon, glass jug. Strangely, at no time did he attempt to sting the stick I was using to push him.  With dirt and rotting pieces of wood I built him a home in a medium sized, glass aquarium. I was careful to arrange it so that there were plenty of places to hide. It’s easy to understand why something with eight legs, two pincers, five eyes and a tail like a John Deere backhoe would be a little reclusive.  Ed’s favorite dish is cockroach on the hoof. He waits with infinite patience in a dark corner till one walks by. Then, with heart stopping speed, he pounces on it and holds it in his pincers.  With an appearance of incomprehensible menace his needle pointed tail hovers over the victim seemingly in search of a vulnerable spot.  He may sting a large roach two or three times before dragging it into his lair where he devours absolutely everything but the wings.

            Sometime at night, roughly one and a half weeks ago, one of Lynn’s spoiled yellow tomcats tore a small hole in the screened top of Ed’s cage.  At six in the morning, as I plodded barefoot and sleepy across the living room carpet, I noticed the fluffy half grown kitten playing with something on the floor.

            It was Ed. He was standing coolly in the middle of the room while “Bugger,” the young tom, bumped his curious nose against the back of the dangerous tail.

            I grabbed the kitten and put him outside, then spent a tense few minutes catching Ed and returning him to his quarters. Needless to say the cage has been modified to prevent a repeat performance. I have a feeling that Bugger has only eight of his nine lives left.  Someday in the not too distant future I’m going to take Ed far out into the glades and turn him loose. He may not be beautiful or desirable by our standards, but in the eyes of nature he is at least as deserving of a place on the earth as we are. After all, he was here first.     

            The stray population here is quite dense at the moment. Two dogs, Shep and the Old Man; two cats, Bugger and Humphrey; Ed, the scorpion; Lynn, the college kid; and a new arrival I think I’ll call Wilbur, His presence is a direct result of one of my bad habits.  I used to drive a semi. In fact, I used to own one. It’s a tough business. Some weeks I would drive 20 hours a day and sleep four.  Like that of most truckers, my heart was usually pumping an equal mix of tired blood and hot coffee.  I’ve never been able to give up the coffee. I don’t drink near as much, but now and then I’ve got to have a cup. If there isn’t one handy, I go out and look for it with the glassy eyed single mindedness of a true caffeine junky.

            Yesterday was one of those days. I walked into the kitchen, picked up the canister marked coffee and pulled off the top. It was empty; nothing in there but air. Life is cruel.

            In less than 10 minutes I was seated at a little table in a dark corner of a local eatery. The newspaper was spread out in front of me and my right hand was around a cup of hot java.  I was reading about a Republican plan to use elderly liberals for fossil fuel when my peripheral vision caught a slight movement near my foot.  Closer examination revealed a tiny grayish brown mouse, about the size of the end of my thumb. More than anything, it looked like two ears and a tail.  It was obviously a baby and obviously lost. It walked around in little circles by my shoe which I do not believe bears any resemblance to a mother mouse.  It was just a tiny creature trying desperately to survive in a place where the chair legs must have looked like giant redwoods. I have felt that way all too often myself.

            To the best of my knowledge, mice are not welcome in restaurants.  I just couldn’t bring myself to leave that helpless little critter on the floor to be stepped on, or poisoned, or worse. I scooped him up and held him in cupped hands. He didn’t make any attempt to escape.  The waitress told me to throw it in front of a car and one of the customers suggested I flush it down the toilet. I’m glad I’m not a mouse in a world of people. I can’t help wondering about the origin of the word humane. It is not a quality I often associate with humans.

            I put the little guy in a small paper bag and carried him out like a coffee to go.  At home I covered the bottom of a 10  by 14 inch clear, plastic container with cedar shavings then dropped in several, 1 inch diameter, pieces of paper tube to act as tunnels.

            “You’re gonna love this, pal,” I said, as I reached in the bag for the furry little cedar shredder.  Like a rock out of a slingshot, he ran up my arm and jumped to the floor of the den. In microseconds, he had disappeared behind a couple of large suitcases and some potted plants.  I could remember the taunting words of my army drill sergeant, “Grandma was slow, but she was old,” as I fumbled about the room after the fur bearing fireball.  He dazzled me with his speed and baffled me with his footwork, but he didn’t fool Lynn for a second. She snatched him up like a mailbag off a train station and dumped him unceremoniously into his new home.  As soon as he gets big enough I’m going to drop him off in a field somewhere so he can sink or swim as was the case of all things in nature until the bumbling intervention of man.  Till then he is welcome here with the other strays and misfits; we may not be alike, but at least we’re not alone.