1.
PASSION
AND DEATH - FLOYDRMOOSE
Six
years earlier, a ball
of
white fur, a point
of
a tail dabbed in red.
“Red”
is what they named
him
to differentiate him
from
his siblings, “Green,”
“Blue,”
“Yellow,”
“Purple”
and “Orange.”
Dogs
were for outside
the
farm girl within you
objected,
creating
opportunities
for
seed
spitting birds,
rodents
masquerading
as
hamsters and gerbils,
even
slowly lumbering
iguanas,
all competing to
be
declared the family pet.
Capitulation
or defeat,
who
knows? Man’s
best
friend won out.
Fevered
searches,
American
Kennel Club,
our
resource, we scoured
and
searched, looking for
the
right dog for our home.
As
mistress of the house,
you
had the final say,
mostly
nays, dismissing
all
our presentations
and
our research.
All
of us befuddled,
a
brand new search
criteria
you laid out,
“We
are a tall, big
family,
the perfect
match
is a big dog.”
Paging
through the
AKC
book, you came
to
a photograph of a
magnificent
white
dog
on a mountain,
the
size of a horse,
with
a mane of lion,
“This
is our dog, find him!”
Your
word was final,
bringing
us to this
cotton
ball, his small red tail
wagging
eagerly at us.
Variances
for a fence
sought
and got, and
put
up around the yard.
We
bring home our
new
family member,
little
knowing how
much
he would
capture
our hearts.
Who
owned who?
In
his eyes, we being
nothing
but the flock
he
was to guard.
But
you, my love,
were
his Alpha dog.
You
owned the heart
of
the small ball of fur
that
napped beneath
the
coffee table that day.
It
was you that he adored.
You
Christened him,
“Floydrmoose,”
a play
on
Fliedermaus. A bat?
Hardly.
The little creature with
the
red tail, became
this
humongous
one
hundred seventy
pound
Great Pyr, the chin
of
his muzzle resting
easily
on the kitchen
counter
as he watched
you,
oh so carefully
prepare
the meals,
waiting
for opportunities
to
sample a pound of
butter,
a bag of Nutter
Butters,
and pieces of cheese.
Oh
yes, he adored you,
greeting
you, his head
bowed
low, only to
raise
it under your
nightgown,
his broad
cold
nose touching
the
warm skin of
your
voluptuous bottom.
A
sudden cry, “Get your
nose
out of there!” would
resound
through the house.
O
yes, he adored you,
taking
my place in
bed,
his head on my pillow
spooning
you as
you
lay on your side,
you
wondering why
all
of sudden I was
breathing
so heavy.
Arguments
resound
throughout
the neighborhood,
kids
arguing as to whether
it
was a Polar Bear or dog
that
guarded the front deck
our
diminutive postal worker,
eyeing
warily the great dog
whose
deep bark greeted
her
every day as she
delivered
the mail,
wondering
if he would eat her.
Photogenic,
he could
not
help but be the
center
of everyone’s
pictures,
our Beth
dwarfed
by the dog
in
her graduation pictures.
As
just as his bark, drawn
it
seemed from the dew
claws
of his back legs,
caught
the notice of
those
passing by,
his
smile was as
captivating,
reaching
from
ear to ear, two
strings
of long drool
hanging
from each
corner
of his grin.
Loving
the camera,
he
would lay on the floor,
like
a pile of snow
on
a July day,
defying
the heat, and
flash
those almond-shaped
brown
eyes, or posed
like
some cross-dressing
fashion
model, draped
in
dress and nylons,
a
Great Pyrenees drag
queen,
his masculinity
never
in doubt.
Lake
water his dreadful
foe,
memories of near
death,
clinging to the
back
of Meg, who dragged
him
from the demise
of
its watery depths.
Bath
water an equal foe,
much
preferring the pink,
coloring
his white mouth
from
the red artificial
apple
ornaments he
mistook
for real fruit.
Ear
mite infestations,
unwelcoming
the drop
of
medication in his
ear
canals, the heart
worm
pills disguised
in
cheese and bacon,
the
blown white undercoat
resting
on the deck like
a
foot of snow, prime
nesting
material, providing
a
soft layer of spun
comfort
for the bottoms
of
mother birds in the Spring.
Six
years later, here
we
are, the sudden limp,
the
cancer eating at
the
bone of his right
rear
leg, the visit
to
the doctor, and
the
stark, cold news.
Too
massive to get
around
on just three
legs,
we wept at
the
stark alternative.
Julius
Caesar’s Ides
of
March, was not as
bitter
as this Seventh
of
the same month.
The
painful climb
into
the back seat the
last
ride to the doctor’s,
instincts
intact, having
to
first check and smell
the
urine marked
ground
around the
entrance,
we walk,
together,
through
the
door. You pull up to
the
building, this woeful,
awful
task to not
be
mine alone, we lift
his
beautiful, massive
white
body onto the table.
The
shot is administered
and
he falls gently into
eternal
slumber, as
beautiful
in death
as
he was in life, and
heartbroken,
we weep.
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