Unleashing a Tiger

Who knew that was all it took to unleash the tiger lurking in the breast of a young woman? Shy creatures they are not. Resistance to any overtures with presumptions of bullying become immediately evident. The smile fades, the mouth grimaces, opens, releases invective, shrills accusations and warnings of dire consequences. And that tall, winsome-looking young woman looked so - I don't know - charmingly inoffensive.

Just a young woman, out walking in the woods with her companion dog. Why would we, two old kvetches turn so bitterly upon her, rail against her lack of civility when we never even realized the mantle of civility so ill garbed her presence? Call it the presumption of the crotchety elderly in the community. Like the village idiot, best not seen, given tacit recognition, for they, like the village idiot, will then demand what it is not theirs to demand.

My dear darling husband unleashed the lunatic in a sweet young woman. Why on earth would he undertake such a bold venture? He who so cherishes the writings of 19th century Russians who excelled in revealing the dark interior of the human psyche; has he learned nothing? He speaks caustically of peoples' oblivion to their responsibility for consequences of their actions. Hah!

He knows, yet knowing fails to temper his own distemper, leashing upon our grizzled heads volcanic-depths of fear lurking in the wary subconscious so readily shattered, the fragile veneer of casual social courtesy wisping into the ether. A damn cold ether too, by the way. Sure, the sun was out, but it was windy, whipping the loose snow off the ground around us.

You want to be dressed nice and warm to venture out on such days for hour-long treks in the wilds of suburbia. But such is our wont. And if you want, then you do. There we were, hoisting our two little poodles over to the trailhead leading down into the ravine. We carry them up the street because contact with the industrial salt liberally sprinkled on the street the better to melt accumulated ice and snow plays havoc on their paws.

The excited and high-pitched voices of women carried through the trees on the wind toward us; two people entering the ravine after us, their pace much slower. We pick ours up, hoping to avoid an encounter where our busy-body little dogs make pests of themselves. Over the bridge at the bottom, up the long haul to the spine of the upper trail. But before we turn to the second ascent there is a large muscular dog with shiny black fur, a bright blue halter around his chest, frantically snuffling about, scenting.

We stop, watch him in the distance, in the trees, and nowhere do we see its owner. It's inevitable, our toy male poodle will see it and begin his stupid yapping; nothing will stop him. We hope to pass the unaccompanied dog unnoticed but as we progress he does notice us and comes bounding over eagerly, a young dog, curious about our presence and likely wanting to play. Our 13-year-old miniature poodle doesn't want to play, she wants to be left alone to plod upward unobstructed, but the dog keeps dancing around her.

My husband has lifted the tiny one, still frantically yapping, and we try to continue onward, but the black dog keeps dogging us, in front, behind, beside us, urging Button to notice him, play with him, and she finally snarls and snaps. At which signal Riley raises the tempo of his yapping and drives us to distraction. I've been urging the strange dog to depart, scat, find its owner, and it ignores me. My husband reaches down with his ski pole and tries to shove it along.

It skips heedlessly back toward Button and she snaps at it again. This time my husband uses the pole to really try to push it away. It finally races up the long hill and we trudge on toward the top ourselves. There, in the distance right where we're headed is a tall young woman, long black hair, rosy-cheeked, pretty. She bends toward her dog, leashes it and as I come abreast breathless from the climb she straightens and smiles.

I return her smile, then launch into a bit of grandmotherly caution that responsible dog owners should either keep their dogs leashed or have them within sight so they can be controlled. Her smile vanishes, a frown takes its place, she turns away. I repeat my unwelcome message, just in case it hasn't quite penetrated and she turns back to me. But then the big gun makes his presence known, still carrying the yowling, yapping Riley.

Her dog was such a bloody nuisance to ours, he almost hit it with his ski pole, he said heatedly. Her eyes widened, you what? He repeated his statement, louder, louder, the very act of saying the words angering him, our pleasure in our walk diminished unleashing his own little volcano. That pretty mouth opened and out came the words "I'll cut your fuckin' balls off"!!

We look at one another, he's puzzled, what is this kind of response, how do I deal with it? You don't, chum, you move on. Unspoken but very well understood, but he's getting more heated and tells her she has no brains. That's when she begins shouting that he's threatening to bash her brains out with the ski pole. And it's also when he begins to walk away. All this while the black dog has sat by quietly, innocently by her side.

The young woman, facing the top of the trail we've come from observes the two women finally catching up, breasting the hill, and she hurries over to them, screaming about how that awful man has threatened her, wailing, screeching. Bloody damn again. I call after her for good measure that she has a responsibility to maintain control of her dog, then follow my fast-retreating husband.

Which gives me a fairly good and private opportunity to interperse his muttered "did you hear what she said? Did you hear that nut?" with my own take on the issue. "You drove her into a hysteria, you didn't have to confront her, I already had." Silence.

It was cold and windy, Riley had stopped his endless headache-inducing yapping, Button was trotting nicely ahead and it really was a beautiful day. Wow...!