S’getting pretty bad when you can’t even hate on a pack of feral dogs.
Yeah, the past couple of months the terror du jour has been a pack of dogs from the other side of the plateau that appeared from nowhere in the area of the canyons. I say ‘from the other side etc’ because it turned out (rather quickly, in fact) that these dogs weren’t technically feral at all but only really badly neglected.
In these pages I have often extolled the pleasures and wonders of living in the desert in one of the poorest and remotest counties in the entire continental United States. There’s a downside or two, of course – and it mostly has to do with some of the people you meet. I got extremely lucky with my immediate neighbors, in that most of them are very nice people interested in being neighborly, and even those who aren’t…aren’t downright sociopaths. But you don’t have to go far to meet a sociopath or two. On the other side of the plateau, there are a few beauties.
And two of them got evicted recently, after the usual long drawn-out process, and before finally leaving (it is feared they didn’t go far) they trashed the trailer and land they’d been renting, and they abandoned five dogs and a cat.
Yup, same dogs who’ve been raising hell in the canyons, killing elk and cattle, the terrors of the region, were found huddling without food or water under that trailer, in pitiful condition, two of them filled with porcupine quills*. The fearsome creatures were apparently quite eager to be rescued.
Unfortunately one of the other side effects of living in one of the poorest and remotest etc is that the animal control department consists of a guy with a pickup, a .22 and a shovel. So I doubt ‘rescue’ is the right word in this case.
If there’s really a retributional hell, there must also surely be a special level in it for people who neglect and abandon dogs.
Also, it rained all day yesterday and today is supposed to be worse. And my Slow Internet woes continue. So I don’t know how much more TUAK there’s going to be today. Later.
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*No, I didn’t know we had porcupines either. That’s the story I heard, and I still think it might be cactus spines. But then, until a few years ago I didn’t know we had skunks. Live and learn.
Too bad the evictees can’t be “rescued”. No excuse for that barbaric behavior.
I’m with Robert on this. Those that abuse and abandon animals deserve to die alone and cold in a ditch someplace. No excuse for that behavior in any way shape or form.
Yep, as of about 20 years ago there was porcs in that stretch of desert. I was looking at properties in that place when they subdivided God’s angry nowhere back a moon or two and was told there were porcupines, skunks, fox, bats…all manner of critters.
I goethe sense the realtor was trying to jerk my ex-wife’s chain. That chick grew up in LA, NYC and Africa. Not much of the fauna or human variety phased her. I think banana slugs and spiders was about it.
I knew some people who served on the panel of people who associate there where you dwell. I asked Ian if he knew them, he didn’t seem to.
Anyway, I seem to recall I saw a Facebook post pertaining to their hounds getting sideways with a wandering pin cushion.
Don’t I also remember Claire’s dog getting stuck pretty good there?
As for those who abandon dogs; I agree with the special place in hell. There’s just something about people who rent trailers that dump their abused mutts….and hoarding.