On the value of a set of balls
He was a smallish French Poodle. A mountain lion with a moderately sized mouth could consume the non-neutered rascal in perhaps three comfortable gulps with very little chewing required. The dog has been gone for about twenty years or so, but he still romps through my mind on occasion. The lion comes to mind because he was very nearly the mountain lion’s main course for supper one day around noon. I was a solo backpacker, often, unless you can negate the word solo by virtue of the fact that the big-balled little critter was always with me on any kind of an outing that didn’t require skis.
Oglethorpe was his moniker. The name was chosen in honor of a famous English philanthropist and army officer who belonged in Europe but preferred to make his name in America. We would have done better to choose a French name, such as Voltaire, or perhaps Jean Laffitte, a sea dog himself, and a French pirate who plied his trade in America. Oglethorpe stuck.
His favorite place to camp out was above timberline deep into the Weminuche wilderness area in the fabled San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Upon shivering himself awake at first light, he would beg for release from the confines of the mountain backpack tent. After sniffing briefly around the tent for just a few minutes, the peace of the morning would come to an abrupt end as Oglethorpe began a series of what I called mugwamping (also a political term) in the loose topsoil of the high tundra. This unusual sound started at a rather low cadence, then escalated after about ten minutes to a near frenzy. He dug and snorted, snorted and dug. His nose was constantly in the dirt, breathing it into his mouth, throat, and lungs in great volumes. This bizarre behavior would not abate for hours on end. Oglethorpe was the mountain lions quarry, but the mountain vole and the fabled shrew were Oglethorpe’s quarry. I never saw Ogie catch one of the mice like creatures, and I feel fairly certain that he didn’t. You see, Ogie was very generous in nature and would have bought one of the captured creatures for me to share.
To see this stumpy poodle, whose genetic structure had been tampered with for centuries by serious European and then American dog fanciers, throw off his silly poodle-ish demeanor and assume the role of the mighty hunter was nothing short of remarkable. To see him fail was only mildly disconcerting, for the little timberline voles and shrews always ran laughing from the tunnels that he invaded to well-planned escape routes. I know, I was there and I heard them laugh in their high-pitched almost inaudible hysteria.
Oglethorpe never suffered the ritual of the canine beauty parlors that shamelessly promoted and produced those frilly little fur balls around the ankles and that little fur ball placed somewhere on the tail. He didn’t have the perpetual look of a small lemur peering through a man-hole cover either. No sometime early in the hotter days of summer the dog was simply shorn of all fur as if he were a sheep. But a sheep this dog certainly was not. No, Oglethorpe had a set of real balls and that seemed to make all of the difference in his personality. With those balls he could saunter up to a neutered dog, three, no, even five times his size and weight, jump right for the throat and latch on until the big dog with no balls was terrified. On the other hand, he was careful not to mix it up with dogs that still had their treasures. Throat latching also proved to be a form of rapid transit for Ogie, although somewhat unreliable, because when he wanted to go somewhere in a big hurry, there was often no big dog around to catch.
To be fair and honest, however, Ogie was obviously more inclined to dig for the diminutive rodents than intimidate the big dogs. At the risk of assigning anthropomorphic characteristics to the little white wonder, I believe he was playing a form of canine golf, rather than looking for a square meal. The voles and shrews are very difficult to see. They are smaller than golf balls and would emerge laughing from one tiny hole and plop into another. Once he nearly caught a fairly large white vole, which I assumed to be an albino. Ogie let out a rather loud yelp in the middle of the frey, and as the mice like creature made its getaway, the dog pursued it with a particular vengeance and spent the rest of the day digging wildly for the albino. Ogie had been bitten on his already tender nose. No other vole or shrew seemed to interest him for the rest of our stay in that camp. I had witnessed a miniature drama, a high country version of Moby Dick and Captain Ahab.
His Purina poodle chow package always went into my backpack, and would often go untouched for about two days, so I imagined that he starved himself, only to heighten and sharpen his senses. He was a dog on a mission. He was a dog destined for the master’s tournament of his species. He was not nearly as silly a creature as the French had made him look.
I worked in a car dealership once. The general manager, as fortune would have it, was somewhat of a dandy, a poodle with a large ego and some serious loot to throw around. He reminded me of the feisty, non-neutered poodle, albeit fresh from the poodle parlor. He was younger than most of the employees, but no one wondered why he ran the place, for at one time or another he would take various employees aside, most salesmen, and in very low tones ask, “Joe, do you know why I run this place, have no college degree, and play golf every day?” The employee would inevitably feel the manager’s jaws tighten around their throat, and meekly respond as inaudibly as the voles, “no sir.”
“Well I’ll tell you why Joe.” He would say in a confiding voice. “ It’s because I have balls and you don’t.”
Was he Oglethorpe reincarnated? Or was he just another tasty morsel ready to be snapped up by the next mountain lion that sauntered by? One concept is certain. Whether it’s golf, business, or chasing voles and shrews, it’s all just a game. The pleasure of playing is always in your attitude toward the game.
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