On Death and Poodles

The irrigation pipe is aluminum, about 12 feet long, with a smaller, 2 foot pipe sticking out of it atop of which is stuck a sprinkler head. These pipes are connected each to each for hundreds or thousands of feet, depending on the size of the field. My job—my father’s job—was to disconnect these pipes one at a time, move them about 20 feet away from their original spot, on a parallel line, and reconnect each pipe again. This requires walking through 2 feet of mud, or 3 feet of whatever plant is stuck to the ground, in cold, heat, wind, and hunger. Sometimes the pipes are still filled with water; sometimes animals will crawl inside and die; sometimes they’re empty, so the wind whips them about.  One of the guys who walked ahead of me was whipped about by the wind which forced him to tilt his pipe upwards, juggling it he stumbled backward, and in the process hit an electric wire which fried him on the spot.

The big local news on television that night revolved around a woman whose dog had been eaten by another dog; the former was a poodle, the latter a stray dog. The dog was caught and killed. The woman, white hair trembling in the wind, cried and begged the public to look after their dogs, lest they kill or be killed in this horrible, violent, world.