We had a dog in the neighborhood whose name was Coco. Everyone hated the dog and the dog hated everyone. The universe has a way of keeping things even.
The dog bit several people and was seldom on its leash. It wasn’t a big dog but because it would bite and it was so loud and mean everyone tried to steer clear of him. Try as you might if he saw you then he would run up on you and just growl and snap his jaws. You just knew he was going to bite you if he could.
He bit Pam one day. And although she reported it to the owners they still left it off the leash often times.
Grandma Jo was afraid of the dog. She would carry a garden hoe to her mail box to get her mail at the street. The dog's owners were across the street and she never knew if the dog was inside, outside or on its leash.
One day I was at Grandma Jo’s house putting up a new TV antenna. It was a hobby of her’s and mine. We would order a new antenna every few weeks and put it up on the peak of her roof to see if new one was going to be any better than the past ones. The then current candidate had all sorts of cones, and curled. It was an impressive strange and impressive site.
I was up on the ladder putting this alien contraption on Grandma Jo’s roof when Coco came running across the street snarling and barking and snapping his jaws. He stopped a few feet short of the bushes in front of Grandma Jo’s house and a good long ways away from the ladder. Although he was a crazy, insane dog something was different about him.
He seemed to be working his courage up to do something?
What?
Climb the ladder?
He swiftly darted under one of the bushes and came out with a big bone.
Grandam Jo fed all the animals in the neighborhood. She fed the cats bacon grease and then she would laugh because they all had “the scoots”. Obviously some kind of soup bone had made its way to the outside of the house and Coco knew it.
When I asked Grandma Jo, calmly and politely, how she could be so afraid of Coco on the one hand that she carried protection every time she went outside and - on the other hand - fed him, she looked at the ground. She frowned and then looking at me said, “Don’t yell at me David.”
©David L Arment