Beagle Treats

 

“Is that a beagle?” Tromping down the final hill at Wildcat Canyon, I’ve spotted a beagle within in a group of chatting hikers. Ian and I have been walking for over an hour and while it’s been lovely to be outside in nature with the old oak trees, brown grasses, and puffy clouds, we’re both pretty puffed at this point.

            But I can’t resist a beagle!

            “Yes, it is,” the woman who’s holding him on his leash smiles at me.

            “Cute!” I exclaim. “My parents had a beagle. They are just the cutest.”

            “Yes, they are,” she agrees, answering me even though I’m interrupting the conversation she’s having with two other women and a couple guys, who Ian and I had seen earlier. Or mostly, heard: “I’d rather have the Toxins in my body, eat the toxins, and live 5 years less, than deprive myself of them,” one of the guys had blared into the air. Ian had shaken his head, “Easy for him to say, he’s young. Wait till you’re an old man!”

            Now Toxin Guys are here chatting with Beagle Lady and her two other women friends. It’s a friendly place, Wildcat Canyon is.

            Back to the beagle. He completely ignores my overtures. The more I try to coax him over, the less interested he is. “Here, I’ll give you guys a treat to give him. Then you’ll be his best friend.”

            Beagle Lady retrieves two treats from her fanny pack, begins to hand them over to us when….WHOOOSHHHHH! A bike whizzes by, the man on it earbudded in. He careens very close to the group, going at least 40 miles an hour. Or so it seems.

            Beagle Lady shrieks. Backs up. Toxin Man starts yelling: “HEY! ASSHOLE! WATCH THE HELL WHERE YOU’RE GOING. SHARE THE ROAD AND ALL THAT SHIT!!!!”

            Zooming Bike Man makes no response; he’s long gone down the path now, probably not even hearing the yelling.

            “FUCK YOU!!!!!” Toxin Man screams at the top of his lungs. Steam coming out of ears if that were possible.

            The rest of us all sigh a collective breath of relief. But Toxin Man isn’t done. “Those guys make me so mad! I have a friend who was recently hit by a bike.”
            “Oh, no!” Beagle Lady exclaims. “Were they hurt?”
            “Yeah, yeah, they were. They’re okay, but I don’t get it. What’s with the Share the Road and all that shit? I mean….”
            Another bike comes whizzing through us; this time it’s a woman clad in black spandex and a long brown ponytail trailing after her.

            “HEY! FUCKER!” Toxin Man yells again.

            She ignores him.

            “See what I mean?” Toxin Man shakes his head vigorously, his sweaty bald pate glistening in the early afternoon sun.

            “I am all for sharing the road,” Beagle Lady offers, “but they have to share it!”

            Ian and I are just standing there. Trying to avoid getting hit by either bikes or profanity.

The beagle is unfazed. Now starts sniffing around me for his treat. I bend down and give it to him.

            He chomps it down. Heads over to Ian who also produces a treat.

            Beagle Lady tries to smile, “I told you he’d be your best friend with a treat.”

            “Of course,” I grin, bending down to give the beagle a pat on the head.

But he’s finished with me. Knows I don’t have any more treats. His nose to the ground, straining at the least. He’s ready to get on with his odor exploration.

            I rise to leave, “Well, thanks for letting us pet the beagle.”

            Beagle Lady nods, “Sure.”

            She turns back to her friends, starts in on another chat. Toxin Man and his companion aren’t moving, maybe still fuming. Such rage may make it hard to walk.

            Ian and I continue down the shady tree lined path. A lone hawk circles over us, high in the bright blue sky. A cow moos in the distance. The breeze rustles a few fall leaves from their bough that fall in our path.

            I wipe the beagle treat dust on my pants leg and open the car door, plopping down in the passenger seat, ready to head home to a bathroom, some lunch and a nap. 

            The ring of profanity still in my head as I close the car door and settle in for the ride home.

           

           

           

The Exterminator

 

The dusk was warm and still. After the intense heat of the day, a blanket of soft air surrounded me as I marched down Clinton Street. I loved the evenings after a hot day. No cold wind. No suffocating jackets. Only the stillness of the heat.

            It was magical.

            Turning the corner from Clinton onto 32^nd, I spied a line of cats on Evelyn’s lawn. She and I have chatted over the years about cats, the weather, holidays. You know, the important stuff. Tonight, as I stopped in front of her house, I noted four cats lined up: Ozzie, the big established irascible orange tabby; Kitty, the sweet fluffy black cat; Sammy, the shy brother of Ozzie and Kitty; and an unfamiliar fuzzy orange and white cat next to Sammy.

            “Evelyn!” I called out to her as she emerged from the house. “There’re a lot of cats on your lawn tonight.”

            She laughed, welcoming. Wiping a stringy dark bang out of her eye, she came toward me and then stopped to survey the cat line.  Clucking her tongue, she hollered: “SAMMY SAMMY! Get away from there!”

            Turning to me, she rolled her eyes. Her thick mascara dripping. “He has a rat!”

            “Oh no!” I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the rat. I hadn’t noticed this before she pointed it out, but now that I looked more closely, I did see a motionless, rumpled grey carcass at Sammy’s feet.

            Now, Sammy eyed Evelyn distrustfully. I could hear him saying, “You are NOT taking away my treasure! I worked hard for this and I’m proud of my accomplishment. Let me finish him off in peace!”

            But Evelyn was having none of it, stomping over the lawn toward him, shooing and yelling. “Git away! Sammy! NOW!”

            Sammy backed off slightly; the other orange fluffy cat fled over the fence. “Oh, Spooky! I’m sorry! Oh, dear,” she shrugged, looking back at me, “I hope I didn’t scare Spooky.”

            With a name like that, I thought, it should have been the other way around. But maybe Spooky had been instrumental in the hunt, capture, and murder of the rat.

            Now Sammy was back at the rat’s spot. He was not gonna give in easily. Evelyn came back and stood next to me. “He’s the Exterminator. That Sammy. He kills rats.” She sighed, heavily. Then pointed at the black cat, Kitty, “And that one, my sweet Baby, she kills birds.” I tried not to gasp, thinking of how awful this was, but hell, cats will be cats. Killing is in their nature. They are beasts of prey. “And that one, Ozzie!” She laughed softly, shaking her head, “He kills bugs!”

            We both burst out laughing. Perfect, I thought, the biggest cat kills the smallest prey.

            Sammy moved a paw tentatively toward his lifeless conquest. Batting it slightly. “SAMMMY!” Evelyn hollered again. “Git away from that!”

            I was secretly hoping that if she could get Sammy away from the rat, that it was just playing dead. I will never forget the time that my Big White Cat, Pablo, came into the house one rainy night, and deposited a lifeless mouse on the floor in front of me and my friends, deep into watching Lady and the Tramp. “Meow” he had announced. Two of us had shrieked, scooching up on the sofa, that archetypal woman v. mouse fear rising up and overwhelming. Then the mouse had lifted its tiny head and ran under the piano. It wasn’t dead after all, evidently. Julianne, the brave one of us, coaxed it out from the piano somehow and captured it with an elaborate contraption built from a flattened granola bar box and a cheese grater, which she positioned over the mouse, trapping it. Then she’d carried it out the front door, releasing it into the stormy night.

            Pablo sat there, unfazed, before turning and sauntering away.

            So, tonight, I was hoping that the same fate would befall this rat, but sadly, it did look quite dead.

            I needed to walk on. The night was falling and Evelyn had work to do.

            “Well, good luck with the Rat Retrieval,” I said, waving good bye.

            “Thanks,” she shook her head, “I’ll need it.”

            She stalked back into the back yard, presumably to find some sort of apparatus to remove the dead rat.

            As I continued down the street, the warm night now tinged with the hilarity of cat jobs, I smiled to myself.

            Cats: wild beasts, ferocious felines, and eradicators of vermin.

            A car passed by, its headlights illuminating the asphalt. The crunch of its tires breaking the quiet of the night. A small screech from a night bird sang out.

            I quickened my pace as the darkness approached, the silhouette of a large cat up ahead, sitting plumply in the middle of the sidewalk. Who knows what vermin lurk in the night?

            Good thing the cats are on the job!