Life the hound Eqivocal

Mary and I were sort-of attacked by pit bulls over the weekend, and let me first assure friends and family that we made it out alive and with all of our fingers and toes.

Watch: QWERTY

See?

Right hand: POIUY

We decided to spend the three-day Veterans Day weekend at the Lava Beds National Monument, which is only about an hour south of town and which has several virtues.

First it’s only about an hour south of town.

Also, it is a historic battlefield and you can visit the sites of various battles between Modoc Indians and United States Cavalry in what was the last Indian war in North America. (Basically, the Indians won all the battles but things didn’t turn out so good for them anyway. The rest is history.)

Finally, there are lots of caves.

The best thing about the lava beds is that it’s almost entirely deserted in winter and has a nice primitive campground, so when there’s a lot of snow in the passes, Mary and I can pull our trailer down there with a reasonable chance of making it back home when we have to. Since I’m not a big fan of battlefields, caves, or even lava, for that matter, the best part for me is building a big fire, because it’s very cold in the winter, and listening to coyotes while I look up at the stars at night.

In my drinking days, I would drink a lot and howl at the moon. Now I just howl at the moon. It’s amazing how much fun you can still have sober.

Except, anyway, this time as we drove down to the campground we couldn’t help but notice that every campsite was occupied by multiple vehicles, numerous tents, and dozens of kids, most of them of the teenage persuasion. We drove around awhile and weren’t sure we were going to be able to find a place to even stay, so we finally asked one group what was up. They told us that there were one or two sites still open and that they were Pathfinders.

Pathfinders?

Like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, but for Seventh-Day Adventists.

Sweet Holy Jesus (!), (literally), I’m thinking they’ve got back issues of Awake! or The Watchtower in all those utility trailers they’re towing and Mary and I are the only heathens within fifty miles. I’m feeling a lot of solidarity with the Indians, but we decided to set up the trailer in a rather nice remaining spot and whatever happens, we don’t answer the door.

It turns out that Seventh-Day Adventist teenagers are unimaginably well-behaved, enough so that it was starting to creep us out a little. Mary teaches junior high and I’ve substituted eighth grade, and we know something’s not right with these kids. But still, the weekend is quiet considering our few hundred neighbors. I shivered beside my campfire, and our dogs had some nice walks. No coyotes, but the dogs prefer it that way after a close encounter in the Grand Tetons last summer.

Sunday morning as we were packing up, a young woman of twenty-something, not quite looking like an Adventist somehow, walked by with two pit bulls. Nice dogs, she assured us, and they were, if a little oafish. Still, these are scary looking dogs even if they’re licking your hand at the moment. Brindle, they were, which is pit bull for camo. She said she got them at the pound and one was part lab and one was part Shar Pei because it had wrinkles. And I’m thinking “Right, and I’m part white mouse because I have blond hair going to gray.” These were pit bulls, but she never uttered the “PB” words. Our dogs were safely tied to the picnic table and not acting like idiots for a change, a pretty good sign they know who not to mess with. They didn’t mess with the coyote in Grande Tetons, either.

We had a nice morning packing up, and then we decided to take the dogs for a last walk around the campground before we left. All the Adventists were packing up and leaving, too, and the next part reminds me of a poem I read recently.

The Hound
By Robert Francis (1901-1987)

Life the hound
Equivocal
Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.

I cannot tell
The hound’s intent
Till he has sprung
At my bare hand
With teeth or tongue.
Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event.

Since Mr. Francis lived to be 86, I assume life was more or less friendly to him. (I’ve noticed that most poets seem to live to an old age. I think I might take up writing poetry.)

In our case, Life the hound turned out to be the pit bulls and I was fairly clear on their intent. They were going to kill us or kill our dogs, maybe both. Mary saw them first and yelled a commanding—NO!!—which they ignored and came on fast. Their heads were down, hair up, and they were growling. This wasn't a social call to see if we'd like to read a few Bible tracts.

Each of us had one of our little dogs, Bandit and Nick, on a leash. The pit bulls separated and one went for Mary behind me and the other for Bandit, and I, I had my trusty walking stick which I pretty much don’t leave home without any more because this kind of thing isn’t all that rare. My stick, actually an aluminum pole, has a big wooden ball on one end and a sharp spike on the other. I’ve done this before, and as the pit bull closed in I gave it a good Old Testament smite on the head and it stopped him in his tracks. I could see he was looking at some stars of his own. He was still eyeing Bandit and growling, though, so I smote him again, and he backed off.

Meanwhile, Mary just behind me had picked up Nick and turned her back to protect him, and some saintly Adventist guy had intervened and somehow got a hold of the second pit bull’s collar. Thank you, Jesus.

The whole thing lasted a few seconds and was accompanied by a lot of shouting on our part and barking by all the various dogs, and then it was over and there were dozens of Adventist kids looking at us with their mouths open and you could tell everybody was really scared, us included. I just said “Let’s go” to Mary, and we walked away, me with the spike end of my stick covering our retreat.

So that was it. Life the hound equivocal, and I’m reminded sometimes that it can swat you dead, in a heartbeat, like a bug, and there’s really not a lot you can do about it. My walking stick wouldn’t deter even one really determined pit bull unless I actually ran it through with the spear end, and I doubt I could ever do that in time because you never know if it’s an actual charge or just a regular dog thing that will end with everybody sniffing butts.

It all got me wondering what I’d do in a more serious attack, so I checked out some martial arts web pages when I got home. One said to wrap a shirt around your arm, then when the dog bites the shirt, fall on it and pin it with your chest, then gouge its eyes out with your thumb. Be sure to get them both because a pit bull will keep coming if it has a good eye left.

Good idea! These martial arts guys, they’re such kidders! I don’t recall having a lot of time to wrap a shirt around my arm.

Or, I have a gun, but that would risk hitting an Adventist kid, and there’s no better way to ruin a nice campout than by shooting someone else’s dog. My gun is totally false security, but I’ve long realized that false security is the only security. (We’re currently in a very nasty war prosecuted on that premise, but the administration is loath to explain it that way.) I like my gun because I sleep better when I have it with me out in the woods, but I wouldn’t want to ever actually shoot something with it.

So it’s best to laugh about the whole thing and remember what that pit bull looked liked when I conked him on the head and just hope that next time there will be another nice Adventist man to pull off the second dog.

But really, two pit bulls, they’re probably going to win if it gets serious.