Part 11 (1/2)

Patrick was the first to break the news. ”I named mine Feathers!” he proclaimed.

”Mine is Tweety,” said Conor.

”My wicka Wuffy,” Colleen chimed in.

I shot Jenny a quizzical look.

”Fluffy,” Jenny said. ”She named her chicken Fluffy.”

”Jenny,” I protested. ”What did Digger tell us? These are farm animals, not pets.”

”Oh, get real, Farmer John,” she said. ”You know as well as I do that you could never hurt one of these. Just look at how cute they are.”

”Jenny,” I said, the frustration rising in my voice.

”By the way,” she said, holding up the fourth chick in her hands, ”meet s.h.i.+rley.”

Feathers, Tweety, Fluffy, and s.h.i.+rley took up residence in a box on the kitchen counter, a lightbulb dangling above them for warmth. They ate and they p.o.o.ped and they ate some more-and grew at a breathtaking pace. Several weeks after we brought the birds home, something jolted me awake before dawn. I sat up in bed and listened. From downstairs came a weak, sickly call. It was croaky and hoa.r.s.e, more like a tubercular cough than a proclamation of dominance. It sounded again: c.o.c.k-a-doodle-do! c.o.c.k-a-doodle-do! A few seconds ticked past and then came an equally sickly, but distinct, reply: A few seconds ticked past and then came an equally sickly, but distinct, reply: Rook-ru-rook-ru-roo! Rook-ru-rook-ru-roo!

I shook Jenny and, when she opened her eyes, asked: ”When Donna brought the chicks over, you did ask her to check to make sure they were hens, right?”

”You mean you can do that?” she asked, and rolled back over, sound asleep.

It's called s.e.xing. Farmers who know what they are doing can inspect a newborn chicken and determine, with about 80 percent accuracy, whether it is male or female. At the farm store, s.e.xed chicks command a premium price. The cheaper option is to buy ”straight run” birds of unknown gender. You take your chances with straight run, the idea being that the males will be slaughtered young for meat and the hens will be kept to lay eggs. Playing the straight-run gamble, of course, a.s.sumes you have what it takes to kill, gut, and pluck any excess males you might end up with. As anyone who has ever raised chickens knows, two roosters in a flock is one rooster too many.

As it turned out, Donna had not attempted to s.e.x our four chicks, and three of our four ”laying hens” were males. We had on our kitchen counter the poultry equivalent of Boys Town U.S.A. The thing about roosters is they're never content to play second chair to any other rooster. If you had equal numbers of roosters and hens, you might think they would pair off into happy little Ozzie and Harrietstyle couples. But you would be wrong. The males will fight endlessly, b.l.o.o.d.ying one another gruesomely, to determine who will dominate the roost. Winner takes all.

As they grew into adolescents, our three roosters took to posturing and pecking and, most distressing considering they were still in our kitchen as I raced to finish their coop in the backyard, crowing their testosterone-pumped hearts out. s.h.i.+rley, our one poor, overtaxed female, was getting way more attention than even the most l.u.s.ty of women could want.

I had thought the constant crowing of our roosters would drive Marley insane. In his younger years, the sweet chirp of a single tiny songbird in the yard would set him off on a frenetic barking jag as he raced from one window to the next, hopping up and down on his hind legs. Three crowing roosters a few steps from his food bowl, however, had no effect on him at all. He didn't seem to even know they were there. Each day the crowing grew louder and stronger, rising up from the kitchen to echo through the house at five in the morning. c.o.c.k-a-doodle-dooooo! c.o.c.k-a-doodle-dooooo! Marley slept right through the racket. That's when it first occurred to me that maybe he wasn't just ignoring the crowing; maybe he couldn't hear it. I walked up behind him one afternoon as he snoozed in the kitchen and said, ”Marley?” Nothing. I said it louder: ”Marley!” Nothing. I clapped my hands and shouted, ”MARLEY!” He lifted his head and looked blankly around, his ears up, trying to figure out what it was his radar had detected. I did it again, clapping loudly and shouting his name. This time he turned his head enough to catch a glimpse of me standing behind him. Marley slept right through the racket. That's when it first occurred to me that maybe he wasn't just ignoring the crowing; maybe he couldn't hear it. I walked up behind him one afternoon as he snoozed in the kitchen and said, ”Marley?” Nothing. I said it louder: ”Marley!” Nothing. I clapped my hands and shouted, ”MARLEY!” He lifted his head and looked blankly around, his ears up, trying to figure out what it was his radar had detected. I did it again, clapping loudly and shouting his name. This time he turned his head enough to catch a glimpse of me standing behind him. Oh, Oh, it's you! it's you! He bounced up, tail wagging, happy-and clearly surprised-to see me. He b.u.mped up against my legs in greeting and gave me a sheepish look as if to ask, He bounced up, tail wagging, happy-and clearly surprised-to see me. He b.u.mped up against my legs in greeting and gave me a sheepish look as if to ask, What's the idea sneaking up on me like that? What's the idea sneaking up on me like that? My dog, it seemed, was going deaf. My dog, it seemed, was going deaf.

It all made sense. In recent months Marley seemed to simply ignore me in a way he never had before. I would call for him and he would not so much as glance my way. I would take him outside before turning in for the night, and he would sniff his way across the yard, oblivious to my whistles and calls to get him to turn back. He would be asleep at my feet in the family room when someone would ring the doorbell-and he would not so much as open an eye.

Marley's ears had caused him problems from an early age. Like many Labrador retrievers, he was predisposed to ear infections, and we had spent a small fortune on antibiotics, ointments, cleansers, drops, and veterinarian visits. He even underwent surgery to shorten his ear ca.n.a.ls in an attempt to correct the problem. It had not occurred to me until after we brought the impossible-to-ignore roosters into our house that all those years of problems had taken their toll and our dog had gradually slipped into a m.u.f.fled world of faraway whispers.

Not that he seemed to mind. Retirement suited Marley just fine, and his hearing problems didn't seem to impinge on his leisurely country lifestyle. If anything, deafness proved fortuitous for him, finally giving him a doctor-certified excuse for disobeying. After all, how could he heed a command that he could not hear? As thick-skulled as I always insisted he was, I swear he figured out how to use his deafness to his advantage. Drop a piece of steak into his bowl, and he would come trotting in from the next room. He still had the ability to detect the dull, satisfying thud of meat on metal. But yell for him to come when he had somewhere else he'd rather be going, and he'd stroll blithely away from you, not even glancing guiltily over his shoulder as he once would have.

”I think the dog's scamming us,” I told Jenny. She agreed his hearing problems seemed selective, but every time we tested him, sneaking up, clapping our hands, shouting his name, he would not respond. And every time we dropped food into his bowl, he would come running. He appeared to be deaf to all sounds except the one that was dearest to his heart or, more accurately, his stomach: the sound of dinner.

Marley went through life insatiably hungry. Not only did we give him four big scoops of dog chow a day-enough food to sustain an entire family of Chihuahuas for a week-but we began freely supplementing his diet with table sc.r.a.ps, against the better advice of every dog guide we had ever read. Table sc.r.a.ps, we knew, simply programmed dogs to prefer human food to dog chow (and given the choice between a half-eaten hamburger and dry kibble, who could blame them?). Table sc.r.a.ps were a recipe for canine obesity. Labs, in particular, were p.r.o.ne to chubbiness, especially as they moved into middle age and beyond. Some Labs, especially those of the English variety, were so rotund by adulthood, they looked like they'd been inflated with an air hose and were ready to float down Fifth Avenue in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Not our dog. Marley had many problems, but obesity was not among them. No matter how many calories he devoured, he always burned more. All that unbridled high-strung exuberance consumed vast amounts of energy. He was like a high-kilowatt electric plant that instantly converted every ounce of available fuel into pure, raw power. Marley was an amazing physical specimen, the kind of dog pa.s.sersby stopped to admire. He was huge for a Labrador retriever, considerably bigger than the average male of his breed, which runs sixty-five to eighty pounds. Even as he aged, the bulk of his ma.s.s was pure muscle-ninety-seven pounds of rippled, sinewy brawn with nary an ounce of fat anywhere on him. His rib cage was the size of a small beer keg, but the ribs themselves stretched just beneath his fur with no spare padding. We were not worried about obesity; exactly the opposite. On our many visits to Dr. Jay before leaving Florida, Jenny and I would voice the same concerns: We were feeding him tremendous amounts of food, but still he was so much thinner than most Labs, and he always appeared famished, even immediately after wolfing down a bucket of kibble that looked like it was meant for a draft horse. Were we slowly starving him? Dr. Jay always responded the same way. He would run his hands down Marley's sleek sides, setting him off on a desperately happy Labrador evader journey around the cramped exam room, and tell us that, as far as physical attributes went, Marley was just about perfect. ”Just keep doing what you're doing,” Dr. Jay would say. Then, as Marley lunged between his legs or snarfed a cotton ball off the counter, Dr. Jay would add: ”Obviously, I don't need to tell you that Marley burns a lot of nervous energy.”

Each evening after we finished dinner, when it came time to give Marley his meal, I would fill his bowl with chow and then freely toss in any tasty leftovers or sc.r.a.ps I could find. With three young children at the table, half-eaten food was something we had in plentiful supply. Bread crusts, steak tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, pan drippings, chicken skins, gravy, rice, carrots, pureed prunes, sandwiches, three-day-old pasta-into the bowl it went. Our pet may have behaved like the court jester, but he ate like the Prince of Wales. The only foods we kept from him were those we knew to be unhealthy for dogs, such as dairy products, sweets, potatoes, and chocolate. I have a problem with people who buy human food for their pets, but larding Marley's meals with sc.r.a.ps that would otherwise be thrown out made me feel thrifty-waste not, want not-and charitable. I was giving always-appreciative Marley a break from the endless monotony of dog-chow h.e.l.l.

When Marley wasn't acting as our household garbage disposal, he was on duty as the family's emergency spill-response team. No mess was too big a job for our dog. One of the kids would flip a full bowl of spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s on the floor, and we'd simply whistle and stand back while Old Wet Vac sucked up every last noodle and then licked the floor until it gleamed. Errant peas, dropped celery, runaway rigatoni, spilled applesauce, it didn't matter what it was. If it hit the floor, it was history. To the amazement of our friends, he even wolfed down salad greens.

Not that food had to make it to the ground before it ended up in Marley's stomach. He was a skilled and unremorseful thief, preying mostly on unsuspecting children and always after checking to make sure neither Jenny nor I was watching. Birthday parties were bonanzas for him. He would make his way through the crowd of five-year-olds, shamelessly s.n.a.t.c.hing hot dogs right out of their little hands. During one party, we estimated he ended up getting two-thirds of the birthday cake, nabbing piece after piece off the paper plates the children held on their laps.

It didn't matter how much food he devoured, either through legitimate means or illicit activities. He always wanted more. When deafness came, we weren't completely surprised that the only sound he could still hear was the sweet, soft thud of falling food.

One day I arrived home from work to find the house empty. Jenny and the kids were out somewhere, and I called for Marley but got no response. I walked upstairs, where he sometimes snoozed when left alone, but he was nowhere in sight. After I changed my clothes, I returned downstairs and found him in the kitchen up to no good. His back to me, he was standing on his hind legs, his front paws and chest resting on the kitchen table as he gobbled down the remains of a grilled cheese sandwich. My first reaction was to loudly scold him. Instead I decided to see how close I could get before he realized he had company. I tiptoed up behind him until I was close enough to touch him. As he chewed the crusts, he kept glancing at the door that led into the garage, knowing that was where Jenny and the kids would enter upon their return. The instant the door opened, he would be on the floor under the table, feigning sleep. Apparently it had not occurred to him that Dad would be arriving home, too, and just might sneak in through the front door.

”Oh, Marley?” I asked in a normal voice. ”What do you think you're doing?” He just kept gulping the sandwich down, clueless to my presence. His tail was wagging languidly, a sign he thought he was alone and getting away with a major food heist. Clearly he was pleased with himself.

I cleared my throat loudly, and he still didn't hear me. I made kissy noises with my mouth. Nothing. He polished off one sandwich, nosed the plate out of the way, and stretched forward to reach the crusts left on a second plate. ”You are such a bad dog,” I said as he chewed away. I snapped my fingers twice and he froze midbite, staring at the back door. What was that? Did I hear a car door slam? What was that? Did I hear a car door slam? After a moment, he convinced himself that whatever he heard was nothing and went back to his purloined snack. After a moment, he convinced himself that whatever he heard was nothing and went back to his purloined snack.

That's when I reached out and tapped him once on the b.u.t.t. I might as well have lit a stick of dynamite. The old dog nearly jumped out of his fur coat. He rocketed backward off the table and, as soon as he saw me, dropped onto the floor, rolling over to expose his belly to me in surrender. ”Busted!” I told him. ”You are so busted.” But I didn't have it in me to scold him. He was old; he was deaf; he was beyond reform. I wasn't going to change him. Sneaking up on him had been great fun, and I laughed out loud when he jumped. Now as he lay at my feet begging for forgiveness I just found it a little sad. I guess secretly I had hoped he'd been faking all along.

I finished the chicken coop, an A-frame plywood affair with a drawbridge-style gangplank that could be raised at night to keep out predators. Donna kindly took back two of our three roosters and exchanged them for hens from her flock. We now had three girls and one testosterone-pumped guy bird that spent every waking minute doing one of three things: pursuing s.e.x, having s.e.x, or crowing boastfully about the s.e.x he had just scored. Jenny observed that roosters are what men would be if left to their own devices, with no social conventions to rein in their baser instincts, and I couldn't disagree. I had to admit, I kind of admired the lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

We let the chickens out each morning to roam the yard, and Marley made a few gallant runs at them, charging ahead barking for a dozen paces or so before losing steam and giving up. It was as though some genetic coding deep inside him was sending an urgent message: ”You're a retriever; they are birds. Don't you think it might be a good idea to chase them?” He just did not have his heart in it. Soon the birds learned the lumbering yellow beast was no threat whatsoever, more a minor annoyance than anything else, and Marley learned to share the yard with these new, feathered interlopers. One day I looked up from weeding in the garden to see Marley and the four chickens making their way down the row toward me as if in formation, the birds pecking and Marley sniffing as they went. It was like old friends out for a Sunday stroll. ”What kind of self-respecting hunting dog are you?” I chastised him. Marley lifted his leg and peed on a tomato plant before hurrying to rejoin his new pals.

CHAPTER 24.

The Potty Room.

A person can learn a few things from an old dog. As the months slipped by and his infirmities mounted, Marley taught us mostly about life's uncompromising finiteness. Jenny and I were not quite middle-aged. Our children were young, our health good, and our retirement years still an unfathomable distance off on the horizon. It would have been easy to deny the inevitable creep of age, to pretend it might somehow pa.s.s us by. Marley would not afford us the luxury of such denial. As we watched him grow gray and deaf and creaky, there was no ignoring his mortality-or ours. Age sneaks up on us all, but it sneaks up on a dog with a swiftness that is both breathtaking and sobering. In the brief span of twelve years, Marley had gone from bubbly puppy to awkward adolescent to muscular adult to doddering senior citizen. He aged roughly seven years for every one of ours, putting him, in human years, on the downward slope to ninety. person can learn a few things from an old dog. As the months slipped by and his infirmities mounted, Marley taught us mostly about life's uncompromising finiteness. Jenny and I were not quite middle-aged. Our children were young, our health good, and our retirement years still an unfathomable distance off on the horizon. It would have been easy to deny the inevitable creep of age, to pretend it might somehow pa.s.s us by. Marley would not afford us the luxury of such denial. As we watched him grow gray and deaf and creaky, there was no ignoring his mortality-or ours. Age sneaks up on us all, but it sneaks up on a dog with a swiftness that is both breathtaking and sobering. In the brief span of twelve years, Marley had gone from bubbly puppy to awkward adolescent to muscular adult to doddering senior citizen. He aged roughly seven years for every one of ours, putting him, in human years, on the downward slope to ninety.

His once sparkling white teeth had gradually worn down to brown nubs. Three of his four front fangs were missing, broken off one by one during crazed panic attacks as he tried to chew his way to safety. His breath, always a bit on the fishy side, had taken on the bouquet of a sun-baked Dumpster. The fact that he had acquired a taste for that little appreciated delicacy known as chicken manure didn't help, either. To our complete revulsion, he gobbled the stuff up like it was caviar.

His digestion was not what it once had been, and he became as ga.s.sy as a methane plant. There were days I swore that if I lit a match, the whole house would go up. Marley was able to clear an entire room with his silent, deadly flatulence, which seemed to increase in direct correlation to the number of dinner guests we had in our home. ”Marley! Not again!” the children would scream in unison, and lead the retreat. Sometimes he drove even himself away. He would be sleeping peacefully when the smell would reach his nostrils; his eyes would pop open and he'd furl his brow as if asking, ”Good G.o.d! Who dealt it?” ”Good G.o.d! Who dealt it?” And he would stand up and nonchalantly move into the next room. And he would stand up and nonchalantly move into the next room.

When he wasn't farting, he was outside p.o.o.ping. Or at least thinking about it. His choosiness about where he squatted to defecate had grown to the point of compulsive obsession. Each time I let him out, he took longer and longer to decide on the perfect spot. Back and forth he would promenade; round and round he went, sniffing, pausing, scratching, circling, moving on, the whole while sporting a ridiculous grin on his face. As he combed the grounds in search of squatting nirvana, I stood outside, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the snow, sometimes in the dark of night, often barefoot, occasionally just in my boxer shorts, knowing from experience that I didn't dare leave him unsupervised lest he decide to meander up the hill to visit the dogs on the next street.

Sneaking away became a sport for him. If the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could get away with it, he would bolt for the property line. Well, not exactly bolt. He would more sniff and shuffle his way from one bush to the next until he was out of sight. Late one night I let him out the front door for his final walk before bed. Freezing rain was forming an icy slush on the ground, and I turned around to grab a slicker out of the front closet. When I walked out onto the sidewalk less than a minute later, he was nowhere to be found. I walked out into the yard, whistling and clapping, knowing he couldn't hear me, though pretty sure all the neighbors could. For twenty minutes I prowled through our neighbors' yards in the rain, making quite the fas.h.i.+on statement dressed in boots, raincoat, and boxer shorts. I prayed no porch lights would come on. The more I hunted, the angrier I got. Where the h.e.l.l did he mosey off to this time? Where the h.e.l.l did he mosey off to this time? But as the minutes pa.s.sed, my anger turned to worry. I thought of those old men you read about in the newspaper who wander away from nursing homes and are found frozen in the snow three days later. I returned home, walked upstairs, and woke up Jenny. ”Marley's disappeared,” I said. ”I can't find him anywhere. He's out there in the freezing rain.” She was on her feet instantly, pulling on jeans, slipping into a sweater and boots. Together we broadened the search. I could hear her way up the side of the hill, whistling and clucking for him as I crashed through the woods in the dark, half expecting to find him lying unconscious in a creek bed. But as the minutes pa.s.sed, my anger turned to worry. I thought of those old men you read about in the newspaper who wander away from nursing homes and are found frozen in the snow three days later. I returned home, walked upstairs, and woke up Jenny. ”Marley's disappeared,” I said. ”I can't find him anywhere. He's out there in the freezing rain.” She was on her feet instantly, pulling on jeans, slipping into a sweater and boots. Together we broadened the search. I could hear her way up the side of the hill, whistling and clucking for him as I crashed through the woods in the dark, half expecting to find him lying unconscious in a creek bed.

Eventually our paths met up. ”Anything?” I asked.

”Nothing,” Jenny said.

We were soaked from the rain, and my bare legs were stinging from the cold. ”Come on,” I said. ”Let's go home and get warm and I'll come back out with the car.” We walked down the hill and up the driveway. That's when we saw him, standing beneath the overhang out of the rain and overjoyed to have us back. I could have killed him. Instead, I brought him inside and toweled him off, the unmistakable smell of wet dog filling the kitchen. Exhausted from his late-night jaunt, Marley conked out and did not budge till nearly noon the next day.

Marley's eyesight had grown fuzzy, and bunnies could now scamper past a dozen feet in front of him without him noticing. He was shedding his fur in vast quant.i.ties, forcing Jenny to vacuum every day-and still she couldn't keep up with it. Dog hair insinuated itself into every crevice of our home, every piece of our wardrobe, and more than a few of our meals. He had always been a shedder, but what had once been light flurries had grown into full-fledged blizzards. He would shake and a cloud of loose fur would rise around him, drifting down onto every surface. One night as I watched television, I dangled my leg off the couch and absently stroked his hip with my bare foot. At the commercial break, I looked down to see a sphere of fur the size of a grapefruit near where I had been rubbing. His hairb.a.l.l.s rolled across the wood floors like tumbleweeds on a windblown plain.