Animal Appetite

instead of continuing straight ahead on Route 3, which leads through Trenton to Mount Desert Island, and thus to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. Acadia, I might mention, in a transparent effort to drum up tourist business for my poverty-stricken home state, not only offers all those justly famous mountains-meet-the-sea vistas best enjoyed while consuming incredible quantides of Maine lobster, but is one national park that really does welcome dogs.
    The only scenery visible from the parking lot of the motel where I’d made a reservation consisted of a drive-through fast-drink gourmet-coffee stand, two gigantic supermarkets, dozens of storefronts that glared competitively at one another across Route 1, and, in the distance, the alluring view of the L.L. Bean outlet. Like the park, however, the motel welcomed dogs. When I checked in, the young woman behind the desk merely glanced at Rowdy and Kimi, smiled blandly, and said, “Oh, and you have pets.” As applied to my obsession, the word pet always strikes me as ludicrous. Then she asked the routine Maine question about malamutes: “What percent?” I told the truth. “None. They’re Alaskan malamutes.” Her brother-in-law, she replied, had one just like that, only bigger. His was eighty-eight percent. “There’s a guy in Owls Head who breeds them,” she added. Hybrids. Wolf hybrids.
    “He doesn’t actually breed them anymore,” I informed her, without admitting that the guy was my father. As you’ll have gathered, his hybrids are a topic I prefer to avoid. “As a matter of fact, he’s getting back into golden retrievers.”
    An hour later, at three-thirty, I parked my Bronco on a narrow, mainly residential side street off Route 1 around the corner from a shop that, according to a fading sign, had once sold fresh-cut flowers and fresh-caught fish. By then, the juxtaposition didn’t seem strange. I was beginning to reorient myself to life in Maine. Here, economic survival depends on the kind of diversity evident in roadside signs that offer guns, ammo, live lobsters, worms, crawlers, ceramics, acupuncture, lawn ornaments, pick-your-own organic raspberries in season, and specials on permanent waves—all at the same establishment. In a copy of The Ellsworth American that I’d bought in the motel lobby, I’d noticed that on the following Saturday, a local club was sponsoring an event advertised as a “family fun shoot.” (“Sorry, Junior,” announces Dad, loading his target pistol, “I’m afraid you drew the short straw today, son.”) If you didn’t feel like practicing a radical and shockingly delayed form of family planning, you could attend what was billed as a “fire-walking seminar” at what was rather outrageously described as an “alternative wellness facility.” Truly! I quote: “... a fire-walking seminar on Saturday from 1:00 to 6:30 P.M. The seminar will facilitate a positive relationship with terror. Active participation in walking on coals is strictly voluntary.” The fee was fifty dollars. Preregistration was encouraged—why, I couldn’t imagine. You’d think it would have been better not to leave time for second thoughts. I prayed to Almighty Dog that Kevin Dennehy’s ashram in the Berk-shires didn’t supply hot coals. Fire-walking was the kind of macho challenge that Kevin would never be able to resist.
    Anyway, Tracy’s Doggone Salon was housed in a converted single-car garage attached to a small, neat lime-green bungalow. On the dormant grass in front of the house, the December wind inflated the bodies of two artificial Canada geese and sent a wooden Sylvester chasing after a fleeing Tweety. Tracy’s sign swung from a little wrought-iron post. Parked in the driveway was a dark van with white letters on the side that read James W. Littlefield. Plumbing & Heating. Stacked against the side of the converted garage were a few dozen lobster traps. Leaving Rowdy crated in the Bronco, I got Kimi out. As 1 led her up the path to the door of the shop, a gust fresh from the pile of lobster traps washed me in the rank, salty reek of rotten fish. From Manhattan, are you? Well, remarkably enough, these cutesy coffee tables are , now and then, also used to catch lobsters. Hence the bait.
    “And now,” 1 said brightly to Kimi, “you get to have a lovely bath.” I’d chosen her because Rowdy’s pad cut was temporarily sparing him what he perceives as his frequent ordeals-by-water.
    My plan, such as it was, fell apart the