Features

"Hearing Things"
A Photo Essay by Fred First
Fred First © 2007

Let me say at the very beginning that our dog is generally a well-adjusted, self-assured, yellow lab of normal intelligence and disposition.

This is not to say that, like all of us, he doesn't have his own eccentricities. I must tell you that he is obsessive about butterflies. We can't tell if he loves them or hates them, but for certain, he is far more interested in catching their shadows that race across our yard than in the actual insect.

Convinced that these dark moving shapes disappear underground, he follows them at great speed across the gravel road or edge of the pasture to catch them before they go subterranean. With the warmer weather, our yard will become pock-marked with his attempts to dig up those burrowing butterfly shadows from down there with the moles.

Also some might consider it a bit unusual for an animal with such well-developed incisors that his favorite treat is a big wedge from a head of cabbage. Still, considering the eclectic local food preferences in our county, this mixed diet of cole slaw and butterfly shadows might not be all that odd.

And this particular dog's political leanings are most definitely toward the pacifist end of the spectrum, again not all that odd hereabouts. Given the least edge on our conversations (even if only animated and not agitated) the dog places his body between us as an arbitrator, appeasing first Ann, then me, then back again. He is a conflict-averse, peace-loving, flower-child of a dog. So we grin and speak in soft tones, even at those times when we are as temperamentally compatible as Keith Olbermann with Ann Coulter - for the dog's sake, you understand.

But as I say, even considering all these bits of oddness, Tsuga (pronounced SooGa, named after a tree, the dying hemlocks you might have noticed in our forests) generally has run on a pretty even keel around here. Until yesterday.

"What in the world has gotten into the dog?" Ann wondered.

Tsuga bounced up and down at the back door, so frantic to get outside it seemed he'd jump through the window panes if he could. Is it another dog, you suppose? Well, if he'd heard another dog, then we certainly didn't want to let him out. We tried to distract him with a chunk of banana in his Kong, but he would not be consoled or diverted.

Agitated and filled with doggy dread of an invisible demon, he slithered around the edges of the kitchen, following Ann into the laundry room. Pressed into the angle between the washing machine and dryer, he hid his head in her robe.

"Maybe he's sick and needs to do something outside we wouldn't be happy for him to do inside" I suggested, and we hoped he wouldn't bolt off down the road as we opened the back door for him to escape.

He trotted straight to the far side of the drive over against the bank and just sat there, looking back toward the house, trembling.

After five minutes, he hadn't budged. Well then. It wasn't to puke or poop he wanted out so badly. I called him in. He refused. I threatened. He refused. How very odd. I gave up and left him peering fretfully at the back door as I closed it and headed back to whatever it was I had been doing at the computer before this episode of canine neurosis.

In the front room I heard a vaguely familiar sound, off and on intermittently, from the computer speakers-an instant message notification-something that happens very infrequently around here. But then, it had only been about a week before that I received a GoogleTalk invitation, and when the little BaBink! notification sound went off, the dog…

That's it! A simple computer sound pushed the dog's freak-out button. Go figure. I wonder where's the threat in this? Is there a frequency we can't hear that hurts his ears? Or is it fear that makes him tremble and cower-a terror that overcomes him, as if this were the scream of a Jurassic beast lurking somewhere in his species-memory?

But maybe, after all, this is simply one of those inexplicably irritating sounds we can't quite explain that rubs us the wrong way. Tsuga cringes at this computer alarm, but the dog would have no negative reaction at all from the sound of fingernails scraping down a dry chalkboard. Or Musak.

Shudder. I just had the terrible waking day dream that the dog here was offered a chance to write this column. I could see it clearly-a very long exposé-page after page of oddball things only a family dog could know about his quirky humans and ought never, ever to tell.

Ann says in Heaven, the dogs hold the leash and the treats. And Tsuga swears he's not going to forget.

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Fred First grows words and images on a rocky old farm in northeastern Floyd County. His daily ramblings can be found on his weblog, Fragments from Floyd. E-mail and comments welcomed.