20 Things the Dog Ate - by Brian Doyle

20 Things the Dog Ate *
- by Brian Doyle -
===== ~~~ =====

1. ANCIENT SQUASHED DRIED ROUND FLAT SHARD OF BEAVER
Sweet mother of the mewling baby Jesus! You wouldn’t think a creature that likes to watch Peter O’Toole movies would be such an omnivorous gobbling machine, but he has eaten everything from wasps to the back half of a raccoon. And let us not ignore the beaver. Speculation is that beaver was washed up onto road when the overflowing lake blew its dam, was squashed by a truck, and then got flattened ten thousand times more, and then summer dried it out hard and flat as a manhole cover, and the dog somehow pried it up, leaving only beaver oil on the road, and ate it. Sure, he barfed later. Wouldn’t you?

2. YOUNG SPARROW
I kid you not. Sparrow falls from nest in the pine by the fence, flutters down ungainly to unmerciful earth, dog leaps off porch like large hairy mutant arrow, gawps bird, in half an instant. Man on porch roars drop it! Dog emits bird with a choking coughing sound, as if disgusted by a misplaced apostrophe. Bird staggers for a moment and then flutters awkwardly up to fence post. I wouldn’t have believed this if I had not seen it with my own holy eyeballs. Wonder how fledgling bird explained that adventure to mom.

3. CRAYONS
I don’t even want to think about this ever again. Crayola. The big box—sixty-four crayons, all colors. Sure, he barfed later. Sure he did. Wouldn’t you?

4. YELLOW JACKET WASPS
Every summer. Even though he gets stung again and again in the nether reaches of his mouth and throat and jumps up whirling around in such a manner that we laugh so hard we have to pee. He cannot resist snapping them out of the air as if they were bright bits of candy, and then making high plaintive sounds like a country singer on laughing gas. I have to pee.

5. JELLYFISH ON THE SHORE OF THE VAST AND IMPACIFIC PACIFIC
Why would you ever do such a thing? What could possibly look less appetizing than an oozing quivering deceased jellyfish? Yet he does. Sure, he barfs.

6. TO 19. SOME NONORGANIC HIGHLIGHTS
Pencil nubs. Lacrosse balls. The cricket ball a friend sent me from Australia. Pennies. Postcards. Sports sections. Bathrobe belts. Kindling sticks. Kazoos. Most of a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Most of a cell-phone charger. Pen caps. Toothbrushes. One of two tiny sneakers that belonged to a child one month old, although to be fair it wasn’t like the kid was actually using the sneakers.

20. AN ENTIRE RED SQUIRREL, CALLED A CHICKAREE IN THESE PARTS
I think the squirrel was suicidal. If you were a squirrel the size of a banana, and you could evade a dog with the athletic gifts and predatory instinct of Michael Jordan, would you venture down to the grass for any reason whatsoever, knowing that the dog could change you from present to past tense in less than a second? Would you? Me neither. But the squirrel did. The skull appeared magically in the grass two days later. The dog declined to eat the skull a second time, probably for religious reasons, or maybe because he knew he would barf. Wouldn’t you?
_________________________________________________________
* Source: The July/August 2013 issue of Orion magazine

"Black and Blue" - by TPO

 

Autopsy: Ferguson youth shot six times * by Frances Robles and Julie Bosman New York Times ===== #### ===== FERGUSON, Mo. -- Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager whose death at the hands of police sparked protests around the nation, was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, a preliminary private autopsy performed Sunday found. One of the bullets entered the top of Brown's skull, suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck him and caused a fatal injury, according to Dr. Michael M. Baden, the former chief medical examiner for New York City, who flew to Missouri on Sunday at the family's request to conduct the separate autopsy. It was likely the last of the bullets to hit him, he said. Brown was also shot four times in the right arm, he said, adding that all the bullets were fired from the front. "People have been asking: how many times was he shot? This information could have been released on Day One," Baden said in an interview Sunday after performing the autopsy. "They don't do that, even as feelings built up among the citizenry that there was a cover-up. We are hoping to alleviate that." [Baden elaborated.] Professor Shawn Parcells, a pathologist assistant based in Kansas, assisted Baden. "You do this for the families," Parcells said. The two medical experts conducted the four-hour examination Sunday at the Austin A. Layne Mortuary in St. Louis. Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for Brown's family who paid their travel expenses, hired them. "The sheer number of bullets and the way they were scattered all over his body showed this police officer had a brazen disregard for the very people he was supposed to protect in that community," Crump said. "We want to make sure people understand what this case is about: This case is about a police officer executing a young unarmed man in broad daylight." Baden stressed that his examination was not to determine whether the shooting was justified. "In my capacity as the forensic examiner for the New York State Police, I would say, 'You're not supposed to shoot so many times,' " said Baden, who retired from the state police in 2011. "Right now there is too little information to forensically reconstruct the shooting." ================================= TPO's Note: - In spite of all the anger and other confused and irrational mindsets going on all sides, some matters have been accepted as incontrovertible facts. 1 - Michael Brown was unarmed. 2 - He was violently killed by an armed police officer. At this point, post-fact  justifications for the killing do not appear to hold water from whatever angle you look at them. ================================== * Source - http://www.twincities.com/nation/ci_26355623 (08/17/2014)