013 - Dogs and Chickens (2 - Coming and Going)

The Last Apricot Tree Under the Mountain

When we moved from town to Eureka Avenue in 1972, we brought my dachshund Haunzie with us. He recognized his inner wolf immediately without regard to evidence to the contrary. He would disappear and come back, cut and bloodied, but strutting. I think Dad the dentist had to sew him up a couple of times, but Prince Haunz did not care. Once he felt his ancient DNA coursing through his sausage shaped torso, he never stopped looking for a fight in our new wilds.

Until one day. Haunzie picked a fight with something bigger and faster that he could not defeat or survive. He bravely made it home, his big cuts bleeding and weeping, before he died. My mom would never stop bringing in new inside and outside pets, but that was the last dog I felt was mine. I think it was a hard way to learn about death but an important lesson, nonetheless. Haunzie would not be the last family member to cross over at the green house in the apricot orchard.

There were plenty of cats over the years, but Mom loved dogs the most. I do not remember them all. I think if you got all of the children together in one room, we could fill in my forty-five years of blanks. I remember Wiggles and Flipper because they had the funniest names. The unforgettable was named Raki, a Japanese bouncing wolf tornado with a curly tail. That dog was as big and as bad as Prince Haunz thought he was in his little Prussian mind.

We lived next door to a family of migrant workers who raised chickens to help feed themselves. They were nice folks living in a world so different from my own. I’d never been close to anyone who would not eat if their chickens didn’t survive, so it was traumatic for them and for us that Raki lived for only one thing: chasing and killing chickens.

After my father had paid the family several times for Raki’s inconsiderate hunts, he was determined to train Raki with better table manners. Dad had heard from some farmer that if you tie a dead chicken around a dog’s neck for a couple of days, he will be cured. So that is what we did. I can still smell the noxious fumes and gases that seemed to punish us more than that dedicated destroyer. We tied Raki to a long wire runner, so he could still gallop and left him to learn his lesson. After the prescribed time, we removed the chicken necklace and unhooked the beast. He couldn’t have run quicker or on a straighter line right over to the first chicken he saw and bopped that flightless cluck right on the head.

Dad had to find a new home where Raki’s high energy and zest could be accommodated but with fewer temptations. It took a while to get used to the hole left by all of the space he took up, but everyone on the street rested a bit easier after he was gone. Unfortunately, that would not be the last time my tender sensibilities would cross paths with the precarious lives of chickens in the country.

From time to time, I dream of Raki running free through orchards, fields and forests. I think we all know what Raki dreams of.

But that was all in the future. For now, we had moved to the country where all we had were each other and the beauty we would grow to appreciate and even depend on.

Editorial and Advance Reader Contributors: Mark Wallace, Alisha Price, Heather Bergevin of Barrow Editing, Mette Ivie, Bonnie Wach, Francoise Boden, Mark Berg, Mike Hammer and Kathy Toelkes. Special thanks to Bill Davis for a kick in the pants that only a friend from your old stomping grounds can give you. Mt. Diablo and Apricot Tree painting by the talented and local artist, Greg Hart.