The Wicked Flea (8 page)

Ban Dogs!

Bad enough that Clear Creek Park is already polluted by dog feces without the latest, which is noise pollution from loud noisemakers blown at all times of the day and night to supposedly stop dogs from fighting with each other and attacking innocent persons like myself who seek exercise and peaceful solace in the publicly owned woods. Enough is enough! It’s high time to clean up Newton’s parks by banning dogs totally and outright.

 -DOUG HARE

NEWTON CENTRE

People Will Be Next!

Regarding grumbling throughout the City about “noise” in Newton parks, Newtonians are harboring under a false assumption. Concerned dog-owning citizens in the futile (!) hope of placating anti-dog factions at Clear Creek Park, in fact, sought the advice of a professional dog training expert who recommended the application of loud auditory stimuli as a scientifically proven method of modifying the behavior of dogs which were offending non-dog users of the park. Now those same complainers are whining about the efforts to modify the very same behavior which was the cause of the original complaints! Some people are never satisfied. Watch out! If dogs are banned from parks, people will be next! –

LIONEL BROWN

NEWTON HIGHLANDS

As it was, the jolting blasts of air horns and personal alarm devices kept interrupting the harmony of man, woman, and dog. No sooner did the joggers resume jogging, the walkers walking, the dogs frolicking, and the mommies and daddies chatting, than someone just had to go and try out one of the damned noisemakers. The most active experimenters with the gadgets were the adult human males, who seemed determined to support the stereotype that men are no more than large preadolescent boys. Two outwardly mature men kept miming a quick-draw contest with their air horns. Or, maybe they were reenacting the gunfight at the OK Corral. Miming was at least silent. The shrieks of the personal alarms were, if anything, worse than the sick-cow blasts of the horns.

“It’s a good thing for Quest that he’s a little hard of hearing,” Ceci said. “But the other dogs! Their poor ears! Men! They’re nothing but little boys.”

“Where did all these things come from?” I asked. Boston is, of course, on the Atlantic Ocean, and the Charles River, which empties into Boston Harbor, has lots of small-boat traffic. Even so, the marinas and marine-supply shops are mainly in the seacoast towns north and south of Boston, not in the western suburbs. As it turned out, someone had bought a whole case of air horns for almost nothing at a gigantic discount store and handed them out to all the dog walkers. The personal alarms had come from electronics shops, both local and online.

Wilson’s corgi, Llio, had her ears flattened. She looked miserable. “This is misguided,” Wilson said reasonably. “Among other things, if the dogs get used to the noise, it won’t stop fights. And Pia had to go and get a personal alarm after what happened with the, uh, sick individual in the ski mask. But what good’s it going to do now?”

“Crying wolf,” his wife agreed. She again wore a running outfit—cream-colored tights and layers of sweatshirts. “Although I must say that I’m not sure these personal alarms do any good, anyway, in terms of personal safety. What if no one hears them? Or hears them and doesn’t do anything? A dog might be afraid of the sound, but a flasher?”

“Low curs, aren’t they?” Douglas joked.

Oddly, Pia didn’t seem to object to his making light of her unhappy encounter. On the contrary, she smiled flirtatiously at Douglas. “You and your puns, Douglas,” she said.

“It isn’t a laughing matter,” Wilson protested.

“I’ve recovered,” his wife told him. “The police said these sickos usually just do what they do. They get off on exposing themselves. They aren’t rapists. If they were, they’d—”

“Pia, enough,” Wilson ordered. “We know what they’d do. It’s obvious. Enough.”

Pia flushed. “Would you not talk to me like I’m a dog?”

Wilson apologized and went on say, “I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”

“Well, that’s what you always say to Llio.
Enough!
Not that she listens.”

“Llio listens better than Zsa Zsa does,” her husband countered. “Not that that’s saying a lot. Oh, God! Here she comes.”

A glance showed Sylvia emerging from the woods. Zsa Zsa was waddling beside her.

“Rowdy and I are going to disappear,” I said, “and Ceci, I think you should get Quest away from here, too.”

“Don’t you have your—?”

“We were lucky last time. It might not work, especially... let’s just go.”

Ceci being the upbeat, if somewhat unrealistic, person she was, said, “Well, yes, it probably is time for us to head home. You have work to do, I’m sure, Holly dear, and we’ve all had our
exercise
for the day, haven’t we, Quest?”

Although our exercise had consisted of traversing the short distance from the car to the middle of the field, I didn’t argue. Ceci believed so fervently in the benefits of fresh air that she considered outdoor breathing to be a vigorous aerobic activity. I intended to have a talk with her about the importance of maintaining muscle tone in dysplastic dogs and to prod her to walk Quest on the paths in the park. But not now.

I cut her good-byes short. As she, Rowdy, Quest, and I made our way toward my Bronco, I checked on Zsa Zsa’s whereabouts. Sylvia and the golden had covered about half the distance from the woods to the dog group, which is to say, about half the length of a football field. I relaxed. Even if Zsa Zsa decided to tackle Rowdy again or to go after Quest, we’d reach the Bronco before she could get to us. In passing, I noticed a runner whose route would intersect Sylvia and Zsa Zsa’s. Someone had mentioned that Zsa Zsa pestered runners. I couldn’t remember whether she chased them, jumped on them, nipped at their heels, or irked them in some other way. This runner, a dark-haired woman, moved with speed and energy; she looked more than capable of outdistancing a dysplastic dog. Besides, even from afar, she somehow radiated an air of taking no grief from anyone, human or canine. She wore black, a bulky black top and, in defiance of the cold weather, black stretch shorts.

Ceci spoke. “I can’t decide whether to tell Althea, because, you see, in some ways, Althea is quite worldly, if you know what I mean, and in others, she is really very sheltered, living as she does in a world of books with all that Sherlock Holmes make-believe and so forth, not to mention that I am her junior by more than a few years, and once a little sister, always a little sister no matter how many years pass and how much water runs under the bridge, don’t you think?”

The language-processing centers of Ceci’s brain must be larger and more complex than mine. Even before my concussion, my mind would digest the first half of one of her sentences and then choke on the final half. “Tell Althea about what?”

“The man!”

“Douglas?”

“No, no, the one in the ski mask. And trench coat.” Ceci lowered her voice. “That silly man who, uh, shows himself. To women.”

Before I report what happened next, I want to make it clear that the moment Ceci raised the topic of telling or not telling Althea about the exhibitionist, I turned my eyes from the field to Ceci, and thus was not watching Sylvia, Zsa Zsa, and the runner in black. Ceci wasn’t looking at them, either; she was looking at me. In other words, I didn’t see what happened and have never said otherwise. Ceci didn’t see what happened, either; she couldn’t have. Neither of us looked in that direction until we heard shouting and barking. When we did, we stopped, turned around, and saw the source of the hullabaloo. The first thing I noticed was that Sylvia was, for once, holding Zsa Zsa’s collar. Specifically, Sylvia was bent over a little and grasping the collar in her left hand. With her right, she was jabbing a fist at the runner in black, who stood a foot or two away from her. I had the impression that Sylvia was gesturing. It’s possible that Sylvia’s fist made contact with the runner’s body. I was too far away to judge accurately. Zsa Zsa was certainly barking, and the women were undoubtedly shouting at each other. I made out only two words:
you
and
dog.

Sylvia, Zsa Zsa, and the runner were closer to the big group of dog walkers and dogs than they were to Ceci, Quest, Rowdy, and me. By the time I turned to watch the dispute, some members of the dog group were rounding up their animals and putting them on leash. A few people, however, were heading toward the scene of the altercation. Pia must have gotten there first. She was followed closely by Wilson, who had had Llio on leash to begin with. Noah was another speedy arrival. His dogs, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jonna, got along well with the other dogs and showed no desire to wander from the group, so he probably felt comfortable in taking his eyes off them.

“There goes Noah!” Ceci exclaimed. “He’s our mayor, you know. That’s what we call him. The mayor of the dog group. He’ll get things straightened out, but doesn’t Sylvia look furious! And that other woman, whoever she is, is really quite, quite angry, and what do you suppose happened? I’ll bet Zsa Zsa chased after her, and then she said something not very nice to Sylvia, and...” By this time, Ceci was eagerly heading toward the quarreling women, her progress impeded by Quest, who shared none of his owner’s inquisitiveness about the drama. “Quest, do stop being a mule!” Ceci commanded.

In contrast to Quest, Rowdy was almost uncontrollably eager to get to the scene of the conflict. Human discord would’ve been of passing interest to him, but in his ears, Zsa Zsa’s insistent barks demanded his intervention. Malamutes are convinced that the world is run, if you can even call it that, by a bunch of spineless incompetents with no sense of order and no ability to enforce rules. Border collies share the conviction, but are committed to rising above the chaos or herding it neatly into enclosures. Malamutes use brute force. Cheerful creatures that they are, they
like
using brute force. Furthermore, they avoid the periphery in favor of the center. In this instance, Rowdy was just positively itching to pounce on Zsa Zsa and teach her a lesson, thereby restoring order and, of course, making himself the star of the show.

I didn’t permit Rowdy to play policeman. But I could have stopped him from dragging me across the field. I didn’t. I’m human, therefore I’m curious. Also, I knew that Ceci was unstoppable. Consequently, Quest and I got hauled to the small group of people who now surrounded Sylvia, Zsa Zsa, and the angry runner. Ceci’s and Rowdy’s timing was actually good, because the four of us arrived at a key moment. From up close, where we now were, I could see that the runner must have taken a fall. One of her bare legs was covered with mud and grass, she had a smear of earth on her face, and she was brushing dirt off her hands. Her cheeks were bright red. At the time, I assumed that ire had made the blood rush to her face. I now know that she just had good coloring. For that matter, she had good everything: a pretty face, large eyes, great legs, and an enviably voluptuous build. Now, her dark eyes crackled, and as she shifted her weight from the ball of one foot to the ball of another, she reminded me of a Scottie sparring in the show ring in a display of the true terrier character that judges love.

Sylvia was screaming, “What the hell was I supposed to do?
You
lunged at
my
dog!”

“I did not lunge at him!” the terrier shouted.

“Her! Zsa Zsa! You made a vicious grab for her!” Sylvia screamed. “And you shoved
me!
You did it deliberately!”

Her opponent was suddenly and ominously motionless. Staring at Sylvia, she said, “I want your name and address.”

“My name and address are none of your goddamned business,” Sylvia told her.

“Oh, yes they are,” replied the runner, reaching under her bulky black sweatshirt and pulling out, of all things, a pair of handcuffs. After once again fishing under her sweatshirt, she produced a black leather case that she opened and held out for Sylvia to see. “Police officer,” she announced. “You’re under arrest. Assault on a police officer. Resisting arrest.”

With that, she quickly stepped behind Sylvia and, pulling Sylvia’s hand from Zsa Zsa’s collar, cuffed her hands behind her back.

“You moron!” Sylvia sputtered. “How could I have resisted arrest
before
you tried to arrest me? You just told me this second you were a cop! Am I resisting arrest? I’m not resisting! How was I supposed to... and I haven’t done anything! You’re the one who pushed me, you bitch! And for Christ’s sake, would someone get Zsa Zsa! Pia, would you for once make yourself useful!”

Released from Sylvia’s grip, Zsa Zsa had fallen silent. She continued to stand near Sylvia, but made no effort to protect her. The golden’s expression was oddly sleepy or dazed, and she showed no inclination to go after any of the other dogs. I often carry a spare leash and was now glad that I had one with me. Pulling it from my pocket, I handed it to someone and asked to have it passed to Pia, who, in contrast to Zsa Zsa, was aggressively defending Sylvia. “My mother did not push you! You lunged at Zsa Zsa, and then you slipped and fell. Everyone saw you. If anyone assaulted anyone, it was you! When you put those stupid handcuffs on her, you wrenched her wrist, and I saw you! This is ridiculous! You can’t arrest my
mother
!”