Here are the characters in this real-life story:
Knowing my feelings about little dogs, imagine how I feel about chihuahuas!
Picture Florida, where I am living. It is a weird place. Things like this go on (this is someone else's):
A couple recently moved in across a gravel road from me in my tightly packed neighborhood. My screened-in porch, where I do my writing, totally overlooks their tiny house, despite my best efforts to ignore everyone.
They have a tiny black chihuahua that they let out to wander. Everyone on the block has talked to them about this. To nutshell the couple’s response, Jesus will take care of the dog.
I have had to chase the dog home to prevent a neighbor from running him over. I have named him Ding-Dong.
Despite we all hate Ding-Dong, we are proper suburbanites and don’t want to see a dog smooshed, especially being the one to smoosh him.
Alas, another danger to the tiny monster appeared. Sunday morning, I am in my screen-in porch, and Ding-Dong is let out to wander. Ever since I chased him, he has come over to bark at my house. He’s standing on the edge of my lawn. To the right of my visual range, I see a giant hawk begin its descent from the sky for attack…right towards the little fucking dog. Huge wingspan versus a dog smaller than a rabbit. Without thinking about it, I charge out and do the screaming and arm-waving thing that works very well on wildlife smaller than us. The hawk diverts because of the crazy human.
As I approach the little monster dog, a vulture lands near him. Keep in mind, these birds are huge. I do the screaming, arm-waving thing, and the vulture departs.
Now standing about five feet from the dog, I look up and see the hawk circling, as well as several vultures. They see me, fortunate for the dog, and fuck off.
Ding-Dong, who usually barks at me, is looking at me like, “What the fuck was that, dude?”
I shrug.
He decides to get over this and marches his little butt towards the big street where the cars are.
I yell, “Is this the fucking Twilight Zone?”
Later my friends asked me, “Did you tell the owners?”
I answered, “What for? Jesus protects the dog, aka that’s apparently me.”
In the Bible Belt, a lot of people rely on Jesus to do things for them. Driving is one of these, and Jesus doesn’t do it well.
But Florida, the home of the first zombie drug outbreak, has so many other variables different from North Carolina, where I lived most of my life. Is Jesus the copilot or is it someone on flakka driving a car on the sidewalk? I told you, Florida is weird.
I later looked up if a red-tail hawk will target a chihuahua for prey, and the answer was yes, it will. What the vultures were doing there, I don't know. Maybe they hoped some left overs from Ding-Dong once the hawk was done...yikes!
Keep your dogs on leashes in Florida or something may eat them!
