A Narrative

There was no good reason for the traffic to be so slow on Utica Road between Hayes and Schoenherr at 6 P.M. From my vantage, it appeared as if some idiot was trying to turn left. However, from my vantage I noticed that he had every opportunity to do so but didn't.

Soon cars began to pass on the right shoulder. I could have, but I didn't. I figured that this Yahoo would eventually turn.

That's when I noticed--about seven cars in front of me--that there was no Yahoo. Each car was rolling up to something, stopping briefly, and then passing it on the right.

There must be some kind of debris in the road, I thought.

After a few moments passed, only one car remained between me and the supposed debris. Still, I could see nothing. The car in front of me paused for an awkwardly long period of time before skirting along the side, and that's when I saw the debris.

It was a dog, dead (or dying) in the middle of the road. I pulled forward a few feet, but felt my heart sink as I began to process what laid before me. It was not just a dog. It was a beagle. I have a beagle, and she's small with a thick red collar. This beagle was small and wore a big read collar. My heart sank.

"That's my girl," I said aloud to no one. I threw the transmission into park--to hell with the people behind me--and I got out. While I was doing so, two thoughts ran concurrently through my mind: Why is she so far from home? And my dog is dead. I'm pretty sure that in those same seconds, I also managed to envision myself consuming a bottle of scotch later in the evening.

I approached the dog and quickly felt ill with sadness and revulsion. The dog was dead, and recently so. It lay in a pool of its own blood. It's eyes were wide open, as was its mouth, from which spewed the puddle of fresh blood.

I knelt beside the dog and began to turn its collar over to look for the ID tag that would confirm that it was mine. The thick smell of blood was thick in the air.

I saw no ID tag, and a better look at the dog told me that it wasn't mine. It was a little bigger (mine's a runt), and it's tail was normal (mine has an L-shaped bend in it's top 7th). Furthermore, mine has well-worn (blackened) paws, and this one's paws were predominantly pink. This dog was less than a year old, and it was dead. Killed by a car on Utica road, 6 P.M. on September 26, 2006.

Thank God, I thought to myself as I looked at the once beautiful but now gory display of an animal. Only then did I realize that my car was parked in the middle of a busy two-lane road, and I stood in front of it, on one knee, before someone else's dead pet.

I knew that I needed to get into my car and drive off. I felt the urgent need to call home to confirm that my dog was indeed safe and sound. However, I felt obliged to move the carcass off to the grassy curb.

I reached around (as best as I could) the blood, and grasped the beagle's midsection. As I lifted it up, blood poured from its mouth, and I could feel shattered bones beneath its tri-colored coat. I'm not really much of a sentimental guy, but I heard myself whispering kind words to the dog as I carried it over to the curbside, "Don't worry. You're OK, now," I said, as I laid it down. I took one last moment to look at him--half in plain sadness and half just to reconfirm that it wasn't mine--and I uttered "I'm sorry" before turning towards my car.

One thing I noticed was that everyone behind me was stopped, and not a one of them was honking or seemed angry in any way for the hold up. Granted, the whole thing happened in less than a minute--probably less than 30 seconds, but for that moment it seemed to me that they all understood. They knew that my need to remove the dog from the road and to whisper a kind word and offer one last pat on its head was more important than them being a paltry minute late.

I slowly, solemnly crossed the front of my car, opened the door and sat down. I jumped into my car and shifted into drive. That's when I noticed that my hands were covered in blood. They felt, looked, and smelled the way that hands do after they have dressed a newly shot deer. Still, I reached into my pocket for my phone, and I called home.

I was on the phone, driving down Utica Road. My hands were coated with blood, and I was not yet completely sure that I had not just found my dog, dead in the middle of the road.

The damn phone kept ringing, and my heart started pounding.

After about five rings (though it felt like one hundred), my wife answered the phone. She was laughing about something, but I didn't care. All I said was, "I just found a dead beagle in the road. Is Nala there?"

"Oh my God," she said, and she began to call Nala. I could hear her shout, over and over, "Nala! Nala! Come here, girl!" She probably only said it three times, but I was going crazy. Before long (though it did not feel so), I heard the word, "She's here, and she's fine."

Thank you, God, I thought to myself (as if the life of my beagle was atop God's list of concerns), but I felt calm begin to settle in on me. Nonetheless, the first thing that I looked for when I walked through my door was that little dog, who always, when I arrive, shakes with excitement at the edge of the kitchen (she's not allowed in the living room). When I saw her there, I felt a feeling that I have only felt perhaps two or three times: pure relief.

Of course, I ran to her, but my hands were still covered with gore, so I went to the kitchen sink and washed them (it took three applications of soap to rid them of the blood). Once they were clean, I knelt down for her, and she came up to me to be patted.


What is it that so draws a man to his dog?

I think that I'll now listen to Elvis's version of "Old Shep." Maybe I'll cry, but if I do, don't expect to read about it on this blog.