July 23, 2013
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The Killer End of the Garden
We had a terrible scare last night.
Every night Nancy takes the dogs outside to give them their Greenies. I believe the tradition started years ago with Murphy because she had bad breath, but Murphy also had excellent house manners. When Riley came to us the dispensation of the Greenies was more firmly tied to the final trip outside simply because we were not sure of his manners (they’re excellent.) Annie’s final trips outside involve definitely going outside, having the door closed to prevent lack of interest, encouraging chirps (“pee, Annie”,) the giving of the Greenie, the eating of the Greenie, more outdoor time to encourage good house manners…
So last night Nancy and the dogs went outside for Greenies, I was watching something on TV, and a dog screamed.
I assumed Riley had schooled Annie again.
But the dog screamed again, a car-hit, caught-in-a-bear-trap scream that just went on and on while I am assembling my bulk and leaning encouragingly toward the back door.
It was dark, the dog was screaming, Annie was running in hysterical circles, Nancy was doing something to her fences in the garden…
What happened was the squirrel’s fault. We hate the squirrel. He lives in a tree at the end of the six-inch forest and he taunts us. He come down from his house, sits on the fence and gloats. Last night was so brazen and ill-mannered he forced Riley to jump up at the fence at him.
As Riley came down he slipped his left leg though a hole in the decorative plant tower: he continued to fall, causing the tower itself to fall and his leg became jammed against the end of a decorative metal swirl. As the tower fell sideway, the pressure it applied to his leg changed, driving the end of the decorative metal swirl into the meat of his leg.
So we have a 52 pound dog caught in the lattice work of a plant tower which is attached to the ground by 57 tendrils of clematis vines. I couldn’t budge his leg, I couldn’t budge the tower. I told Nancy to hold the dog, to keep him from thrashing and I ran into the house for pliers to bend the tower. (I don’t know that this was my idea, it just makes a more heroic narrative this way.)
I ran inside and dug around through our tools for pliers, found a pair of wire cutters, a pair of pliers and ran back outside.
I can’t cut ‘wire’ that is 1/4″ thick.
Hell, I can’t ply it.
We tried moving the tower a little to get a better angle and the dog screamed.
He is a very good dog. He was in pain, he was terrified, we were hurting him as much as helping him and he really, really wanted to bite something. He bit Nancy at least 60 times during this ordeal: he broke her skin once. One tooth.
I was sent back to the house for bigger, more effective pliers.
I dug through the tool drawer, found Nancy’s plumbing pliers (which are called something else: they have angled handles and you can slip one half into four different settings, allowing for a wider mouth, and they’re used in plumbing and come in any variety of sizes, including some I could never even pick up, much less wrench with) and came wheezing back and Nancy said, “there are people at the front door.”
Channel locks. They are called ‘channel lock pliers.’
So I ran to the front door (wondering how the hell Nancy, in the back yard, knew that) and there were indeed three people standing on my front porch, all looking for a screaming dog.
I ushered them inside, gasped directions to the back yard…by now the combination of COPD, heat, humidity, running, excitement and sheer terror has thrown me into oxygen deficit. I can point, however, and they race outside and they manage to free the dog.
I was convinced his leg was broken. I was convince the end of the decorate curl had buried itself into his leg, probably clear to the bone. He has a scratch, which we treated with hydrogen peroxide and triple antibiotic ointment. He walks with a slight limp some of the time. He was more interested in eating this morning than he usually is. Riley is pretty much over it.
Nancy and I went out this morning and collected the scattered tools, cut off the clematis vine at the root (only to discover what was holding the tower so firmly in place was a metal hoop that came with vine and has apparently become one with the dirt. (I still can’t pull it out.)
The clematis was a gift to Ilah, years ago. We planted it for her in the back yard where it has grown with amazing leafy enthusiasm every years since. It never flowers. It never even tries. And then each year the leaves develop something that looks vaguely familiar from the years long ago when I paid serious attention to my garden plants. The symptoms of iron deficiency or something (which is ironic, given the hoop rusting in place around its roots.) The clematis is not doing as well was it was before the accident. I beheaded it. (We may still dig it up and move it. I’ll look up the digging specs on the internet–it’s either too low or too high or its feet are hot…they’re like peonies, that way.)
No, all but one of us is fine.
One of us is worried.
Annie has inspected the killer end of the garden nine times since we got up this morning. Even now, here on the couch in the Conservatory with Nancy, she’s having a hard time relaxing. There is something out there that made Riley scream and pain and now it may be coming after her.
