PANDA AT LARGE
by
Terry Hagerty
I hate to be alone. I'm not paranoid or neurotic. I just like to be around others. Humans, dogs, it doesn't matter.
Of course, I prefer to be around my family. I know them. I like them. They feed me. But they spend a lot of time away from home. They call it work or school or a social life. I don't understand why they are gone so much. We have everything at the house you could want: beds, food, and trees outside to lift your legs against.
I was born at home. My mom, Poppy, was a mostly Labrador pound dog that my family found at the humane society. I never knew my dad. Mom slipped away one night, and before you could say, "Who's your daddy?", I was one of ten in a liter Mom produced by the bed of our adult human roommates. One of the human kids gave away most of my brothers and sisters in the parking lot of a grocery store, but they kept me. Maybe because I was the smallest. They decided to call me Panda, supposedly because I looked like a little panda bear. I wouldn't know. I've never seen a real panda.
Anyway, we became one big happy family.
Mom and I were the best of friends. She was more like a big sister than a mother. We played together. We hung out together. We kept each other company.
Then she passed away a couple years back. It was awful. I missed her immediately.
What followed were days and days of being left alone. The adult humans were gone five out of every seven days. The younger son was away at college for weeks at a time, only coming home to do laundry and pick up his surfboard. The older son had already graduated from college and lived somewhere else. He came home even less frequently. That left me all alone in the back yard for hours on end behind a six foot high chain link fence. I hated it.
I couldn't figure out why they locked me up in the back yard. Did they really think I was going to run away, when they fed me and petted me? Why would I ever want to run away?
The worst part of being locked up was the fact that I could hear dogs and people on the other side of the fence having a good time without me.
I knew I had to get out.
I started to dig under the fence. It was tough, but I found that diligence paid off. After several hours of working the dirt with my front paws, I had created a hole large enough to fit through, and I was free!
I ran about the neighborhood, a cul-de-sac of homes in Southern California with lots of other dogs and cats and just enough wild animals from the forest a few blocks over. It was great!
After a day of frolicking, I returned to the front lawn of our house and waited patiently for my family to return. Usually, one or more of them came home about the time the sun began to turn orange. That day was no exception.
They seemed surprised to find me waiting for them on the front yard. Surprised, but not happy. They filled the hole under the fence and made it clear they didn't want me to dig another one.
So, once again, I was all alone in the back yard, with people and dogs outside having fun.
I looked around at the foe surrounding me, the enemy who was holding me back, the cold, metal, chain link fence. I vowed it would not defeat me. It would not hold me back.
After staring at the fence for the longest time, I noticed a large, plastic trash can sitting beside the gate. It was perfect, like the trash can was calling to me, "Use me to jump over the fence!"
OVER the fence! Why hadn't I thought of that before? Under the fence and through the fence had always made sense, but OVER the fence? It was perfect!
I loped over to the can and leapt on top of it. The plastic sides were not all that strong, so I did not hesitate. With one more leap, I was up and over the driveway gate!
Once again, I was free to frolic, to run with the other neighborhood dogs, to visit the human neighbors, and free to wait patiently in the front yard for my family, when they came home.
Humans are a strange species. Whenever someone is waiting for me, I'm always happy to see them. But my family is only happy to see me, when I'm waiting in the back yard, never in the front.
They figured out about my trash can scheme and moved the plastic container away from the gate, and I was back in the back yard behind the chain link fence.
So I sat and thought and stared at this bane to my existence. What was I to do?
Sometimes, when I'm really bored, I watch other animals, especially little fellows, like squirrels. I envied how they could crawl up and down trees and telephone poles. And then, one day, I noticed one climbing on the chain link fence.
"How does he do that?" I thought to myself. "What's he got, that I haven't got?"
I thought about asking him, but squirrels are such neurotic creatures, not like dogs at all. Instead, I moved in closer and watched how he curled his paws around the chain links, dividing his weight evenly to all four paws. Then, as he advanced upward, he would only take one paw off the chain links at a time, so his weight was never on less than three of his legs. He was never off balance, always in control of the ascent, the crossover at the top, and then the descent. It was all a smooth, balanced motion.
It seemed simple enough, when you broke it down, kinda like catching a Frisbee in mid air. You'd think that was near impossible or just dumb luck, but once you broke it down into logical steps, it wasn't all that hard.
So, I rose up on my back legs and leaned against the fence. I took a moment and experimented with the chain link, wrapping my paws around the metal, seeing if I could lift myself up. It took awhile, but I found if I twisted my front paws just a little, they fit into the diamond-shaped holes in the chain link. Then came the tough part. Slowly, I lifted one leg off the ground and fit it into a hole in the chain link. It worked. Nervously, I lifted my other back leg off the ground. I didn't fall back! I was hanging on the fence!
I fit my second back foot into a hole, then pulled out a front paw and moved it up a few holes in the fence. Then I pulled out my other front paw and moved it up a few holes higher. Then I raised my right back leg. It was working! I was climbing!
With gritty determination, I reached the top, then slowly inched my way over. Unlike the squirrel, though, I had no intention of climbing down the other side. I cleared the fence and leapt to the ground with a bound and raced out into the front yard!
My family was really baffled to find me in the front yard that evening and even more baffled when they searched the back yard for my means of escape. I would have been happy to tell them, heck I wanted to brag about my new-found talent, but they learned how to speak dog.
It was weeks before one of them saw me climbing the fence. They were flabbergasted.
THE END