So I just got out of bed to make a trip to the bathroom and to have a light snack. As I sat at the desk in front of the window in our cozy garret apartment, I noticed police lights up the street. I then noticed movement and heard some shouting. Then I saw a couple of policeman jogging up the street. In front of them appeared to be a giant dog. A huge dog. The size of a small horse. A mastiff or some such. One of the policemen had some sort of chain. Someone yelled "back it up, back it up," and behind the dog/police parade appeared one unmarked police car with a dashboard light coming up our narrow winding street in reverse. After that came at least three more police cars.
I went downstairs and outside to investigate, where my landlord and the tenants below us were assembled, gawking at the receding lights. Sadly, I was the only one to have seen the dog. Less sadly, the thought that a horse-sized dog was loose unnerved the girl who lives below us. Her boyfriend theorized that they were looking for a claw-hammer murderer/rapist. I doubt they could have had any object but the capture of a giant dog.
It is always possible that they were actually chasing some felon (perhaps a claw-hammer murderer/rapist), that the dog was a police dog, and that the cops running behind the dog were simply holding his chain. For this to be true, my estimate of the dog's size would have to have been way off. Police, so far as I know, do not employ horse-sized dogs. It's possible I erred, though, given that I watched the action take place on a dimly lit street maybe thirty feet away.
Nevertheless, I lean toward it having been police chasing a dog. They were running down the middle of the street. Why would a fugitive or a dog chasing a fugitive do that? Anyone who's seen Cops knows that fugitives go for backyards. They want to hide. Also, I never saw a person running in front of the dog; just a dog trotting (seemingly nonchalantly) in front of the cops. Finally, I was immediately struck by the size of the thing. For a moment I really did wonder whether it was a horse.
Regardless, it was more than I bargained for when I got up to piss and eat some crackers.
3 comments:
This is a funny story. Your sleepiness may have contributed to the size of the dog. But once you had that in your head, you couldn't see the scene any other way.
Once I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a little boy with crutches running down the middle of Bathurst St. (a busy street in Toronto) crying "Mama! Mama!" I actually called the police, thinking he might be in trouble, and they acted like I was insane.
I have had that experience, too. Police must get a lot of stupid calls, but they should be trained to treat every caller seriously, so as not to discourage calls in true emergencies. They shouldn't want people thinking "I probably shouldn't call the police. Last time, they treated me like an idiot." They should want people to call the police when in doubt.
Doggonit! What's going on!--s29
Post a Comment