Birdy

have to do a damned thing but watch.
    The township bought us gigantic nets especially made for catching dogs. They have short handles, only a foot or so long but the net part is almost four feet in diameter. They weigh over thirty pounds. There are racks built on the side of the wagon to hang the nets when we ride on the back.
    Down in Philadelphia the dogcatchers are all black. They’regenuine professionals and one of them has been catching dogs for seven years. These guys catch dogs the way the Globetrotters play basketball. They made a real joy out of it.
    They have a regular dog wagon, designed for the job; they can clamber around the fender and get inside behind the driver whenever they want. Only one of them at a time would ride on the outside. He sings out whenever he sights a stray dog.
    They give us lessons with the nets first. They’d worked out left-hand hook shots, right hooks and straight-on jump shots. This last, they say, is for when the dog jumps at your throat. They’re having fun kidding around with us.
    It’s all worked out like big game hunting. They talk about different dogs they’d gotten and about the big ‘mothers’ they’d had to wrestle into the truck, and they show us all the places where they’ve been bitten. They get a straight dollar and a half an hour no matter how many dogs they catch.
    For a week we ride along on the back of the trucks with them. Now, down in Philadelphia, most of the houses are row houses, so they have a system for trapping dogs between the rows. When they spot a dog, one netman jumps off right there and the wagon goes down the street toward the dog. They drop another netman off beside the dog, and the truck goes on down to the other end of the street and swings around. The third guy, the one driving the wagon, gets out there. They all have their nets with them.
    The one in the middle, beside the dog, sneaks up and tries a drop shot; just drops the net over the dog. This is rarely successful. Somehow, the dogs catch on and take off. Then it’s up to the netman at either end. The one in the middle hotfoots it after the dog to keep him moving. As the dog charges past the guy on the end, he’ll try to net him with a right or left hook shot. If the dog doubles back, he has to run past two nets. It’s a lot like a good baseball play where they catch a player off third base and run him down. Finally, the dog takes the plunge one way or the other and most times winds up under the net.
    Then there’d be a lot of laughing and pushing the dog into the wagon. People’d start crowding around and cursing and if itwere somebody’s dog, there’d be big arguments. They have a way of lifting the dog up in the net and dumping him into the cage. They told us one time a character came out and cut the net to get his dog. They laughed till they couldn’t breathe telling us about it. As soon as they’ve locked a dog in the wagon, they’d hightail on out of the neighborhood.
    There’d been dogcatchers a long time in Philadelphia so there aren’t really any packs. What they need down there is a catcatcher. There’re beat up cats wandering all over the streets. You just never see a bird in that part of town.
    These dogcatchers have girlfriends all over. After they’ve gotten seven or eight dogs they take off one at a time for an hour or two to go visit the girls. The rest of us would drive around. Sometimes if a dog looks as if he wants to be picked up, we drop off and try to slip a net over him. Most of the girlfriends are married and these guys would come back laughing and giggling and bragging but scared, too. There are all kinds of jokes about who’s the most tired. They’re actually catching dogs about three hours a day. The rest of the time they are, without doubt, the oldest established floating stud service in Philadelphia.
    They’d ride around flirting. Women are hanging out the windows, leaning on pillows and waiting for them. They’d yell and try to get us to stop. The guys have on-going arguments about who has how many kids with which women. Most of the talking isn’t really words, more just smiles, looks, and deep throat noises. It sure looks like a hell of a lot better life than our fathers have.
    At the end of the day, we’d go back to the dog pound. They have cages there and a setup for gassing unclaimed dogs. This means just about all the dogs they caught. Nobody is about to pay two dollars for a license and a five dollar fine to get out a