I must say that my habit of profiling people – my always-on snap judgment mechanism – comes in pretty handy in our current predicament. Now, as each human is encountered, the bells and whistles go off instantly, the auto-profiling triggering either a sixish-foot sideswipe, a sudden city-block detour or a turn-and-run abort fuckin’ mission.
I avoid certain nationalities altogether, and you can use your imagination as to who these people might be. Also to be given a very wide berth are people in masks. Even before this dust-up I never really understood if the masked marauders were protecting me from their fumes or just scared of breathing my air. I suppose mister and missus mask could actually be sick or compromised, but me thinks most just want attention, and just like the dudes pinching all the TP they’ve commandeered boxes of masks … to feel important and now they’re wearing them all over town as a fashion statement.
I’m not so much afraid of these maskers for health reasons, rather I’m categorically against coming into close range with any mouth-breather who walks the earth choosing to smell his own fuckin’ breath all day.
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For years and years they’ve tormented all the dogs, but especially the black hunting dogs. (Whether this is an ongoing case of animal world racial profiling is a subject for another post.) There are hundreds of geese, giant fat ones from Canada in the park. They are essentially domesticated and the biggest ones will let the biggest dogs walk right up to them and they pretty much tell the dogs, in a Canadian accent, “Back off hosers, I go wherever I want in this park, eh, and yer on a fuckin’ leash and can’t do a damn thing about it, eh.”
We’ve long considered (me and the dog) under what circumstances she would be unleashed, setting in motion a fantastical hunt to the death whereby feathers would fly and necks would be severed and shocked Canadian goose onlookers would have their feathery little stomachs turned by the carnage.
We mostly thought the best, that is, the most-appropriate opportunity would come around Christmas time. I would come in through the front door one Christmas Eve carrying Tiny Tim on my shoulder and then heave the fat goose upon the table, whereby Missus Cratchit would comment, “That’s a right fine bird” and I would then warm my old bones by the fire until the goose was cooked.
Well, with recent developments, we can no longer wait for the ideal Christmas Carol moment. No, as we have been unable to obtain poultry through the traditional channels and since the act of visiting a fowl merchant brings with it certain risks – the time is now!
After consulting the Farmer’s Almanac, we picked a suitable morning for the hunt … the black dog shall have revenge and the hungry family shall have fresh meat. Alas, this is not an act of savagery, rather it is the predestined collision of social forces and irresponsible geese behavior, and so the virus hunter will have her day.
It’s cloudy and cold, 7:06 AM, a bit windy and threatening to pour. There are very few people in the park, none that I can see. We walk in the street and don’t go far until we see maybe fifteen geese spread out over the hilly grass landscape, some out in the distance under the eucalyptus trees and some right up by the edge of the grass near the curb.
As we approach the geese, the dog will usually try to bolt and the geese will scatter, but this morning I reign her in close and admonish her to shush. One particular goose is a foot or two from the street, standing tall but facing the opposite direction. Even though it doesn’t look at us, it is aware of our presence … just doesn’t care.
We’re no more than five feet away from the goose. If the dog were a pointer that’s what she’d be doing. Without warning, I drop the leash and it’s on. The goose scrambles and spreads its wings and tries to take flight, but the dog is on her back like that National Geographic episode where the jaguar pounces on the baby wildebeest.
It’s basically an open-field tackle with the players rolling around on the grass. The dog doesn’t really know what to do but it doesn’t take too long before she figures out that her jaws around its neck put an end to most of the commotion.
As I approach she growls and moves off, dragging the fat bird in the wet grass. I have a pretty sharp pocket knife and I’d figured I would dress the goose in the field, but I wasn’t gonna fight the dog for it, so I walked back to the truck as the sun moved up in the sky. The dog followed in time, breathing real hard yet still holding the prize. She abandoned the catch with the offer of water and dog biscuits.
And that’s how people eating bats in China can lead to a goose killing in Laguna Niguel.
The meat doesn’t taste like chicken, but we kept the beak, we’re using it as a chip clip.
Photo on Visual hunt
