On the Trail

A human volcano erupted recently in my presence. It may not have been as colorful a display as those big Hawaiian lava-lobbers put on, but it was a fiery spectacle nonetheless.

The source was so unlikely—one of those quiet unassuming etiquette-observing, law-abiding dullards who lives so ripple-and-ruffle-free an existence she’s nearly invisible. One of those types some shrink would love to dissect to figure out how so much emotion could be so successfully suppressed for so many years.

Oh well—guess I’ll have to schedule an appointment one of these days, or stop self-facilitating spontaneous Primal Scream therapy sessions in my P.J.s in my front garden at the crack of dawn.

Yes, I’ll admit, after a lifetime of Maud Meekness, I cut loose one day, driven over the edge by the convergence of two unwelcome forces in my front yard: a crew of tree trimmers working simultaneously in seven sycamore trees on my property; and a feckless neighbor in denial about his reckless mutt. How the twain met on this one I’m still not quite sure.

The tree trimmers had a legitimate reason to visit my property and inadvertently trample and trash, in a matter of minutes, a garden area that had taken me eight years to build.

A fire marshal’s edict threatening fines if we failed to bring our community into better compliance with fire safety standards brought armies of tree-scaling hardy souls into our lives for several weeks.

No tree man arrives without his chainsaw, leaf blower or trusty Whisper Chipper, so you can imagine the aural mayhem going on day in and day out. When they finally departed, they left me with a whopping headache and a dust and debris-coated shambles where flowerbeds, shrubs and specimen plants had recently flourished.

For days I was so overwhelmed and discouraged by the mess I could barely sleep or function. But then suddenly late one afternoon I found the will to tackle the resurrection. By nightfall chaos had begun to be tamed if not conquered.

When I awoke early the next morning I decided to steal a glance at the garden’s rebirth then go back to bed for some more much-needed rest. I peered out the kitchen window to see a huge, filthy mutt wallowing in the one flowerbed miraculously spared any damage, ripping plants out of the ground with its teeth and beating down the rest with paws the size of my head.

And I snapped.

I ran outside barefoot in my skimpy P.J.s, over rocks and gravel and strewn garden tools and leftover sycamore detritus and got right in the big idiotic lug’s face.

He cowered then snarled then wallowed some more, 100 or so pounds of wet, muddy, furry destruction (he’d taken a dip in our community lake before continuing on his rounds). I screamed until I was hoarse and he finally got the message—and so did the neighbors.

A concerned neighbor lady hurried over to see if I was all right. In eight years as neighbors I think this was only the third or fourth time we’d spoken. She squeezed my hand and before I could even regain my composure she said, "I know, it’s the tree trimmers, and now this! It’s been hard for all of us, but especially you. We know how much your garden means to you." She was wonderful. Then the D.O. (dog’s owner) shambled up, quite a few notches below wonderful.

"Where’s Mortimer?" he demanded furiously in a voice that sounded like the late character actor Andy Devine on helium. I stared at him in disbelief. His 100-lb. klutzacious dumbbell dog had just violated the sanctity of my garden, and he had the audacity to address me in an outraged tone, asking where the villain of the piece was. If my other neighbor had not been standing by lending such a comforting presence, I fear I—in my heightened state of over-the-edgedness—would have reduced the D.O. to shark bait using my pruning shears.

Instead, quite calmly I apologized to him for making such a fuss, explaining that his dog was permitted to wander our community at will, had invaded and desecrated my property before but now had gone too far and at a time particularly crucial to both my sanity and the well-being of my garden.

"I thought you’d taken him to the pound!" the D.O. roared. Suddenly I looked down. Not only was I barefoot but I was only wearing a T-shirt, and barely three minutes had elapsed before the miscreant’s owner had arrived at the scene of the crime. Not much of a wardrobe, and certainly not much time, for a person his dog outweighs to cart its offending carcass up to the pound.

"He’s never loose," the D.O. insisted indignantly. "He must’ve pushed a door open or something."

"I have witnesses," I said. And I did. One neighbor was heard frequently shooing the dog off her lawn. Several streets away a lady reported finding him on her front porch. Several others reported vehicular near-misses. The dog was already known to officers at the local shelter. "If the dog’s not running loose, sir, then why are you looking for him?" I asked. Seemed like a reasonable question to me.

"Why don’t you just go to hell," the D.O. suggested.

"Happy dog hunting, sir."

The kindly neighbor lady stayed with me a bit longer though it made her late for work. She assured me I wasn’t crazy—well, not for the long term, anyway.