There are times on Bella's walks when you don't know exactly what you should do. Tonight, on Broadway, there was a wheelchair in the middle of the sidewalk. In front of the wheelchair, a man sprawled unconscious on the sidewalk. In the daytime, I might call an ambulance, but in my neighborhood, at night, that's how people sleep. So, I let him be.
Bella, as usual, was focused on food. There was pile of Frosted Cheerios in the gutter under the W-X Freeway. Bella missed the main pile, but snorfelled up "O's" on the fringe. Someone threw up on the sidewalk - looked like some kind of cheesy bean dip - and Bella thought the taste was pure delight. It took a lot of yanking on the leash to pull her way from that.
I worry about Bella. Tonight, I was studying the runes on an unfamiliar graffiti wall when I heard an enormous crunch behind me. Bella had quickly consumed *something*. She'll eat bones, quickly, before I have a chance to intervene. I gave her a T-bone steak bone several weeks ago, and she ate almost all of the bone within half an hour. Tonight, she dragged me over to the Safeway supermarket, gingerly opening the automatic door, urging me to let her roam unsupervised in there - a dog's equivalent of heaven. Outside, she found a chicken drumstick. She knows the rules! Forbidden!
On the way back, I heard a clatter on the landing of an apartment building's outside stairway. A terrified Pekinese had caught sight of Bella, dark specter of the night. That dog won't sleep tonight.
Behind the burned ruins of the Crystal Ice Plant on R Street, there was a small message on a light pole urging people to go to a web site and see if any one of several messages there speak to you. My impression was that this was market research for a cult. Sure enough, Silo's Message is a humanist cult, of Argentinian origin, that nevertheless is popular enough to now have branches all over the world. There is even a branch in Davis, California. Since I'm pretty gullible, I'll probably have to join too. Bella will happily go to the meetings, but only for the hors d'oeuvres. Buffalo wings, preferably.
No comments:
Post a Comment