A dog lodged its head in the fence between my neighbor’s house and mine, and this is what the dog explained to me in a later interview:
I don’t know exactly what drew me down the street and around the corner to the chain-link fence. It may have been the smell of exotic garbage. I’ve got a penchant for bacon grease and a nose for medium rare New York strip steak fat trimmings. Or it could have been the scent of an opossum lumbering just behind the gate.
I can’t remember. My kind is better at sniffing out and chasing down high-curiosity sights, sounds and smells. Immediate gratification is our strong suit. We’re not known for figuring out cause and effect; our only reminders to stay on the straight and narrow come by way of a tug on the leash.
So when I dashed down this street, my nose led me to the gap at the bottom of the metal fence pole, where I dug the black dirt back just enough to fit my head through. The trouble was, with my shoulders wider than my head, I couldn’t move forward. I couldn’t go backwards, either.
I was stuck in the fence long enough to work up a panic. The more I struggled, the more I drooled. The more scared I got, the more I had to pee. So I did. I was fast becoming an unsanitary disaster.
It was getting dark, and I realized that I am perfectly morsel-sized for a wandering coyote or two, so I started frantically hollering for help. My yelps eventually brought a guy dressed in lounge pants out the door of the neighboring house. Stooping down, he spied me, stuck in the fence and petrified. He closed in, and I wanted to either bite or run. Of course, I couldn’t do either. He quickly disappeared and returned with his wife, a glowing flashlight strapped to his forehead.
I was surprised to suddenly see the guy’s wife peering at me from the opposite side of the fence–from the inside the fence, the side that my head was on. With her was the woman who owned the house. I gulped. What could this mean? I peed again.
The owner reached down for my head, and I wanted to bite. I don’t know what came over me, but I found myself licking her hand instead. I was ashamed. Ugh! I was acting like a puppy!
I felt the guy with the flashlight on his head tugging at my legs. He was pulling them—trying to collapse them from under me. I fought back, straightening them with all my might. What was he trying to do?
With the woman forcing my head down and the man forcibly pulling and crumpling my legs from beneath me, the pressures were too great. I snarled, then collapsed. Someone pushed my head downward and backward, toward my body, back into the shallow ditch in the dirt that I had originally excavated. Of course! They were pushing my head back through the widest part of the hole!
Suddenly, my head let go of the fence. I jerked my legs down and propelled my body backwards. I was free! Gloriously free!
My legs started pumping on their own, carrying me away from the hole and the fence and the people. Halfway across the lawn, I paused and looked back. The man and two ladies still knelt beside the chain-link fence and post, looking back at me. For an instant, I felt that I owed something to someone. I should find some way to express my thanks.
But I knew little about gratitude. I only knew about survival. Like a fence that separates, I could not grasp the sort of emotionally-charged grateful recollections of life and living that is reserved only for humans.
My instincts took over instead. There! What was that sound? Was it a cat? An opossum? I hurtled myself down the street into the darkness and never looked back.