So lately when go I jogging at night I keep almost getting attacked by vicious dogs. There is one particular Arcadia street which I prefer to jog through because of the lovely 60’s era tri-level houses, and because there are unlikely to be gangsters, trashy people drinking in their front yards or any other riff raff milling about.
However I failed to plan for the contingency of roaming unleashed attack dogs. I got chased by this pit bull the other night and it was reminiscent of that scene from Fletch except that I didn’t have a vehicle to flee in. Appeals to cooler heads such as “sit boo boo sit” fell on deaf dog ears. The thing was just unappeasable. At first he just sort of stared at me while maintaining a balance between rabid cujorian barking and an eerie “hound of the baskervilles” sort of growl….all emanating from a creature that from afar had looked about as menacing as the ghost of Spuds Mckenzie.
Then the beast just up and charged me. I had to climb a stucco fence and chill on top of it where the thing couldn’t quite reach me. He just sat there barking like the hounds of hell. I resisted the temptation to taunt the poor creature, and got down the other side of the fence and continued jogging.
I have started encountering these mangy mutts on a nightly basis, which has put me on something of an “orange alert” while jogging. The last time I had jogged at that color code level was when I was in
Florida several years ago, in an area where it would not be uncommon to see alligators while running late at night close to swampy bodies of water(although I never saw one.)
perhaps someone should run for office with the political slogan
“jogs not dogs”
Not me though. I don’t want to run for office(I’d be considered too racist, homophobic and creepy to ever get elected to anything anyway even though I’m not all of those things only one or two.) Rather I just want to run from office. As in, run away from my responsibilities, my obligations and myself in the present just like Rabbit in John Updike’s classic…or maybe Logan from a distopian far flung future embarking on a fast paced futile journey to some non-existent sanctuary.
Run!
Meanwhile…