Thursday, January 12, 2006

Eat lead, shitbag...

This post is way off piste (though I'm not sure there is a particular piste for this blog...) but I hope you find it better than inserting hot coals up your nostrils...

Waiter Rant's recent post on pooper scooping, or rather gratuitous lack thereof, prompted me to relate a story in the comments. Buried as it is in the vast numbers of comments (it's a high traffic site), I thought I'd relate it here...

I come from a family of restauranteurs and my uncles are far from conventional. This story relates to one of them. He ran a trendy a cafe in a seaside town. Cappuccino and paninis when such things were exotic.

Anyway, one summer, every morning a stray mutt took to walking by, cocking its leg and pissing up against the door of the cafe. Every day my uncle would curse, mix up some bleach and hot water and clean it off.

He tried chasing it off but that only seemed to make the thing more determined to stake its claim on a daily basis.

Now, my uncle had an air gun. Not a poxy child’s toy but a powerful killing thing. He claimed it was to shoot the sea gulls that plagued the rooftops, though I suspect that he also wanted to go armed into the cellar - you never knew when you might find a rat (we didn’t have a rat problem but then again we had an armed pest control operative…). In quiet moments, he’d open the back door of the cafe and practice shooting targets (the chipped plates and cups that could no longer be used) from the comfort of his chair behind the bar. I think you can see where this is going…

So, the inevitable lightbulb goes on in his head. "I’ll teach that dog a lesson." Not harm it, you understand. Just give it a smack up its arse, so it’ll never forget. You wouldn't want to take a leak in a public place if you found that you couldn't sit down comfortably for a couple of days afterwards.

So he waits. Armed.

Sure enough the mongrel arrives early the next morning for its "morning constitutional" and cocks its leg.

My uncle takes aim...
Right up the chocolate starfish...
He squeezes the trigger...

But then has a change of mind. He might hit the poor thing’s balls. As a man, that is too cruel to contemplate. Or do some real damage. He moves his aim - a glancing blow to the haunch will have the desired effect - a bee sting.

He squeezes the trigger but that hesitation - and sudden compassion - was his (and the dog’s) downfall. In the same instant, the leg goes down, the head turns and SMACK.

Head shot.
Dead dog.
On the fucking steps of the cafe...

SHIIIIIIT!

A moment of panic and my uncle is up and out of the cafe like greased lightning. A glance up and down the road confirms that it is empty. He drags the dog out into the road and arranges it quickly to look like roadkill. He rushes nervously back into the cafe for a ciggie and a cup of coffee to calm the nerves.

The first few vehicles pick their way around the corpse. Then comes the bin lorry. The dustbin men jump down to clear away the dead dog. "Here John," says the first one. "This dog has been shot!" My uncle’s heart starts to race…

"Shot? In Eastbourne? Don’t be so fucking stupid," says number two and hefts the evidence into the crusher…

Enjoy...

6 Comments:

Blogger Pluff said...

Hmmm... I'm rethinking my evil plan to tag the incessantly barking neighbors dog with either pellet or paintballs... Great story!

6:27 pm  
Blogger Salvatori said...

Welcome back Pluff - you have been missed...

9:47 pm  
Blogger Some Woman said...

Wow. That's a really awful story about an attempt to torture a dog who knew no better. Honestly, it wasn't really a bad thing that he killed it so quickly. Far better than the alternative.

8:04 am  
Blogger Salvatori said...

Semsex,

You are of course right. It is not in particularly good taste. It is however, entirely true.

However, I should have made clearer that getting hit by an air pistol pellet (I've collected a couple in my time) is usually rather like a wasp sting or a caning. A sharp pain that'll hurt but won't cause any lasting damage. My uncle didn't really want to even injure the thing, just put it off returning. Yes, the gun was capable of killing a rat at close range but on anything larger you'd have to be very unluck to do it any lasting damage. Sadly, events went the other way.

I may edit the story to make it a little clearer (but the dog will still die).

10:51 pm  
Blogger Salvatori said...

Sorry, also the thing I was focussing on was the human (as opposed to canine) element - my uncle's bizarre thought process, the panic, the somewhat strange aftermath rather than the dog.

That was why I didn't really clock it as being a bit tasteless. But there you go - I've always been a bit of an insensitive moron, I guess.

11:07 pm  
Blogger Pluff said...

Thanks.

While I would never aim to maim or certainly never aim at the boy parts... empathy and all, I hate to admit I have taken a pot shot with a BB gun (lowest velocity) at my old neighbor's beagle at 3am after listening to it bark incessantly all day long. I plead insanity. As it was pitch black I don't think I stood a chance in hell of hitting it... but it would've been my luck that the shot ricoche off of a brick or something and lodge it the owners ass through an open window. Instead, the sound of the BB freaked the dog out and he barked that much louder... for the rest of the night. Just goes to show... karma's a bitch!

9:05 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home