OCR Text |
Show '- ! ) 1 ALL DUNN by Roy Dunn Howdy Folks, The picture of a boy on an outing, without his dog, would not be complete. Boys and their dogs go together like pork and beans, and greater love hath no woman for him in later life. It's only after they forsake their dogs in favor of tight rumped pants, loud socks, fancy hair-dos and hot-rod Fords, complete with girls, that they are sometimes referred to as, "Those crazy mixed-up kids." Anyone who has never seen a dog kill a snake, has never witnessed real courage. I remember re-member one summer day, a group of boys I ran with, were exploring the river bottoms. Our safari was complete with dogs, of course. Dogs and kids explore every hole in the rivet bank, every pile of brush, every hollow tree. Who knew but what we might turn up a fortune for-tune in gold pieces, or discover a murdered corpse? A real j Tom Sawyer adventure! I One of the dogs suddenly discovered a snake which had j immedately coiled to defend . I itself. The other dogs formed a i circle around the snake and the boys sie'ed and urged the dogs on to battle; 1 "Sic'em Spot! Get in there, i sic'em!" ! We egged them on until their . ! excitement reached a fever pitch. No dog made a sound, no growling, no barking, except ex-cept to whine in a high-pitched nervous note. They were scared silly and milled around that snake on stiff legs, trembling as if they were chilling, and their hackles stood straight up from their necks to the base of their tails. I tell you folks, those dogs were wound up as tight as a tent rope in a rain storm. In milling around, if two of them accidently collided or side-swiped, there were twe sharp yelps and their rear section sec-tion seemed to telescope intc their front section. Their radiators ra-diators would leak a little bit, once in a while, but I don't think they even knew it. Every dog's eyes were fixed on that snake, and under no circumstances circum-stances would their gaze be diverted. The snake's head reared from its coiled bulk and waved from side to side, its forked tongue darting in and out. That snake was pretty busy trying to watch all those milling dogs at the same time. Suddenly one of the dogs ran in and grabbed the snake and shook it so violently that the dog seemed to merge intc a blur. After a brief moment of savage shaking, the dog let go and retreated. Before the snake could recover, re-cover, another dog rushed in and repeated the performance Then another dog, anothei violent shake, and so-on until every dog had a turn at shaking shak-ing that snake. I don't know how they knew whose turn it was. While one dog was bus snake-shaking, the others woulc become more nervous if possible, pos-sible, whining, wetting and milling around. By this time the snake was limp as a wet noodle and as dead as King Tut. But the dogs, in their excitement ex-citement didn't realize it was dead. I had to admire the effort the last dog was putting in roughing rough-ing up that snake. He put everything he had into that final shake. Even his rear quarters thrashed around, kicking kick-ing up a cloud of dust. You could fairly hear that snake's end, pop like a whip, when that dog's head changed direction in shaking. Turning the snake loose on the final shake, it was carried, stretched full length, up into the air by the momentum of the shake. It landed, of all places squarely across the neck of another dog. That dog just froze. He wouldn't have been any more motionless if cast in bronze. For a long moment he stood like this, then his legs began to tremble, and slowly, very slowly, he started backing with head lowered until hif nose almost touched the ground. He was walking backward back-ward so slowly that I though) of a slow-motion movie. Th( two ends of the snake wen dragging on the ground and the middle of its length was caught on the dog's ears and wouldn't come off. All the ether dogs were standing as statues, hackles hack-les raised, watching every move. As the dog backed the snake's carcass grimly hung on his ears. The stem of a weed, about 18 inches long, was stripped of its leaves and had been stepped on, leaving it at about 45 degrees de-grees to the ground level. Its sharp end was pointed directly at the rear end of the backing dog. A saturation point was eventually reached and the weed found its mark as ac-! ac-! curately as if guided by a hu-, hu-, man hand. Upon contact, the dog let ; out a wail of anguish that i would make your heart bleed : and your scalp tingle. Very - gracefully he raised up on his t front legs. I'll swear that he j did a few steps of the Russian ; Ballet, as well as several dance steps that I didn't recognize, J but they were very dainty also, j The snake was dislodged. Now this was a plain old country dog ,and he really did-? did-? n't know any tricks. But if he j could have done that trick i dance on command, we would have made a lot of money with him. I always liked that old j dog after that, but we never could get him to walk on his front legs again. I guess he ' was just dumb, after all. Aren't you glad you lik dogs? Don't you wi.h everyone every-one did? I See Ya'all Later. |