Cowboys Versus Astronauts

On the way to the store to pick up ice cream for my roomie Rah, I saw something sprawled in the middle of the dark road and swerved just in time to avoid hitting somebody's little beagle, lying in a heap. It had already been hit at least once.

I couldn't tell if it was still alive, and I couldn't stand the idea of just leaving it. I'm a meddler, and I love dogs. Besides, I had a suspicion that I knew this one from the dog park. So I took three right turns to double back and check on him. I pulled up alongside the dog, put on the hazards, and got out of the car. Up close it was clear the little guy had been killed instantly. There were bits of pink stuff all over the road where the body had been dragged, and a smear of blood ending in a spreading black pool around his head.

His eyes still had some shine to them, but they were mostly closed. I thought the least I could do while I was here would be to get his tag info and go home to call it in, but it was too dark to read the tags without putting myself in danger. Other drivers on the road saw the emergency lights flashing and slowed down to move out of the lane and avoid hitting the dog again. As they passed, I stood away from the flow of traffic and wondered how many people assumed I was the one who'd hit the beagle. Not that it'd make me a bad person--this was a dark stretch of road and shit happens when your dog is free to roam--but I still felt self-conscious about it.

I was waiting for a lull in traffic so I could go take a flash photo of the tags and was half-convincedto just move the dog out of the way myself, when a police car pulled up right behind me and saved me from having to do anything at all.

The officer got out. He asked if I had seen the accident, and I said I hadn't. He checked the tags, then put on some gloves and picked up the dog by the collar and tail to carry it off the road. When he raised it up, the dog's body sagged down like a half-empty sack. I could see its broken skull and muzzle sort of squish out of shape and then hang down as it came up off the pavement.

A huge stream of blood came spilling out of one floppy ear, and a couple of teeth fell out of its open mouth and rolled into the blood pool. It was fucking gruesome, and it all took place in the vivid glow of the cop's headlights. "At least it looks like it was quick," the cop said as he carried the little body over to the roadside. Little rivers of blood were streaming down from the beagle's body the whole time. It was a lot more blood than I'd have expected.

The cop said it looked like the dog had just been hit a few minutes before. I shook my head and said I was never letting my dog off his leash. Not with this busy road only half a block away from our quiet side-street. I thanked the officer for coming out, and left him to his work.

He was still parked there when I came back from the store fifteen minutes later. The whole thing was like a hyper-realistic horror movie. The gore didn't turn my stomach or make me cry or anything like that, but it bummed me out.

When I got home, I hugged the Captain and informed him that he was a good boy.