The Song Dog

The Song Dog

It is getting on to twilight, pulling up Vail Pass there is a little alpenglow on the hills and the temperature is falling fast. Comming around a bend, there he is, big as any coyote I've ever seen with a coat that could only be described as luxuriant. Even from a distance you can see the silken strands rippling and blowing in the blast from each passing vehicle.

The song dog is sitting in the middle of the fast lane his back legs a useless puddle under him. No useless scrabbling, clawing fighting stupid effort to make the side of the highway. He knows that his days on this earth are up. The song dog sits calmly on the roadway staring down each vehicle that comes barreling up the road. Daring, pleading, hoping, waiting for somebody to bring things to their close.

The first hit was undoubtedly just a small, tiny miscalculation. Bang, nobody's fault just bad timing, he was running flat out and would have made it but for...but for well a million little things. The second hit though, the one he is praying for won't come like that. All these conscientious "good drivers" see him sitting there and swerve to avoid him. The second hit has to come from some stupid idiot who doesn't pay attention and just flies down the road oblivious to all that's going on around him.

The song dog does not know it but if he just laid down and stretched his length out across the road passively the end would come much sooner. Even good drivers will not necessarily be able to avoid him and the cold hard calculus of a car says that it will get damaged much less striking stuff on the underbody than the plastic bumper and grill. That course though would rob him of the last dignity and any death might be slow and even more painful striking his rear again and again without ever dealing a fatal single blow.

Instead he waits, calmly staring down each driver in turn asking the question: Do you have what it takes? Will you help?

Car after car swerves away. No no, not me. I don't have it in me today. Please forgive me.

And in a weird way, he does forgive you. Few can dare to mow down one who sits and waits calmly for his destiny. His dignity is what prevents the fast end and it is his dignity that forces everyone to swerve under his terrible gaze.

And so the song dog waits. Calmly, brazenly he waits for one lone useless, useful idiot to come around the corner reaching for the radio or smacking his rowdy kids. Just one hit and it will all be over.

The twilight deepens and still the song dog waits.

I swerve for nuclear holocausts.

harsh.

I saw a coyote dashing around near downtown Denver the other day.

Too bad Trackhead wasn't passing by with his 30/30.

I actually had thought about bringing my shotgun with me but didn't and wished I had.

This post breaks my heart. I'm not sure what to say, but it's a horrible, haunting image. I don't think - no, I know - I couldn't have done it either.

Just after I learned to drive I was in Lymington, a cute little harbour village near my home, when I ran over the back end of a hedgehog. I could see the poor thing in my rear view struggling about in the road, so I thought it was only humane to apply the coup de grace. I stopped the car, reversed back along the road and put the creature out of its misery.

Unfortunately for me, an enormous builder bloke had just stepped out of his front door to see me reversing backwards down the road at speed and then squish a hedgehog. He went ape and ran after the car, then jumped into his pickup and chased me for miles across the New Forest.

I think that was my first ever car chase.

classic roo. You dun good.