As requested by Mark Byron, an essay upon “How the South Saved Civilization”

I don’t know—I mean, we haven’t, yet.

See, we think one of the kids must have backed over Civilization while it was chasing a chipmunk across the driveway. We took the poor thing to the veterinarian, but things didn’t look promising. We thought we were going to have to put it down. It’s better now, but still has some recovering to do.

It’s not bad looking, except, of course, for the tire marks, and looks like it would be good to have around. It seems real smart, and even hurt it can do some neat stuff. It didn’t have a collar and tag on it, so we have put up flyers all around the neighborhood. So far, nobody has claimed it.

We used to have one sort of like it, a long time ago, but it kept biting people and finally one of the neighbors had to shoot it. They gave us one that was related to theirs but it got really big and ate everything in sight, so we sent it back to them and got one of our own. That one has lived a long time—it looked a lot like our neighbor’s, but still had a bad habit of biting. The neighbor didn’t shoot this one, but he didn’t like it either, at least to begin with. Neither did half of our kids. The other kids thought it was great, though, until it started turning on them, too. We tried training it, but it was hard to control then, and hasn’t gotten much better over time. Poor thing has gotten so old now that it just seems confused all the time.

So, even though it’s a bit selfish, we’re sort of hoping no one claims the other one we’re keeping now. The two don’t always get along, but they don’t always fight, either. (Lord help if they manage to have a litter.) The vet bills are hurting us, but we felt guilty and it looked so nice, so we keep trying to nurse it along. Things continue to look a little better every day for Civ; pray for us and it, too.

posted by Terry at 12:37:00 PM