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Portland, Walks with the dogs

Haruspicy

04.09.08 | Comment?

It’s felt lately as if we’ve been stuck in a late-winter fugue state.  We the people anticipate warmer days, or at least warmer rains, and yet we are chilled and our limbs are weary of cursing the gods.  Perhaps it is the early onset of Daylight Savings Time this year we will blame.  Such falsely stretched afternoons so soon have roused joys in our sap while the cold on our skin confounded those expectations and our brains, deep down in the lattice where we are so quick to assume dire consequences, have been whispering into our daydreams that the death of the year will last forever this time.  The addition of snowfall at the beginning of last week was so risibly provocative that the weakest among us did no more than groan and check the linings of their winter coats.

Perhaps the tilting over of the planet has now taken hold and been accepted.  At the end of last week we had several days of sun, though overcast and a cold rain have returned. Nevertheless, the dogs and I on our walk yesterday evening have discovered the true evidence of the turning of the season.  Yes, we have found The First Dead Robin of Spring.

Boris and Vinnie have not yet shown much inclination to the molestation of the carcasses we occasionally encounter on our walks.  Boris is more intested in live prey, like the cat he got his jaws around the other day.  The cat was only in the grip for a moment, and so survived uninjured, but this further reinforces my belief that house cats should remain inside the house and not outside, where they must surely die.  Vinnie prefers to bark at other dogs, old ladies, large intimidating men, crows, bicyclists, motorcyclists, skateboarders, scooterists, and commies.  He is also on the alert for stray tennis balls, which besides the hygiene factor also makes me worried that he will become a victim of anti-dog terrorism.  I pull him away from such discoveries now, another way in which each day we break our dogs’ hearts just that little bit more.

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