A Terrible Thing

One of the local street dogs. There are a couple generations in the neighborhood, maybe twenty dogs and puppies in all. They've never been a problem and keep the cat population on it's toes.

This was not good. We returned from a task and were driving through our neighborhood. Up ahead were several local security guys standing in the street observing a handful of guys in white lab coats running around. As we approached I could see the "lab coats" holding clear plastic bags of raw meat in their gloved hands and were feeding it to the very enthusiastic neighborhood dogs. The twenty of so dogs and their recent puppies were devouring the meat as fast as it could be handed out.

This is the Iraqi method of keeping the street dog population down. Each piece of meat was laced with poison, most likely designed to cause massive internal bleeding within the dogs, killing them all within hours. It's an image that will live with me for years, ten-week old puppies sitting in the dirt gnawing gleefully on pieces of raw meat as we drove past.

Aftermath: A few hours later I returned to the street. The dead dogs lay in the dirt along the side of the road. Two fuzzy puppies lay together near a mound of dirt. As tomorrow is the beginning of the weekend they will remain there for several days.