Birdy

dog.
    They’d empty the wagon, then gather the overdue dogs into the gas chamber, close the door, a door like a safe with a twisting handle, turn on the gas, then go over and clean out the cages where the dogs had been.
    Birdy and I are fascinated by the gassing. After half an hour,they turn on the fans to suck out the gas, open the doors and pull the dead dogs out by the tails. Neither of us has had much to do with anything dead. It’s hard to watch them go in live, jumping, barking, trying to get attention, then come out dead with their eyes open. There’s a special incinerator designed to burn the dogs. It has a long, movable grate they can pull in and out for dumping the dogs into the flames. They clean out the gassing chamber and the day is finished. They laugh and joke while they do all this but we can tell they don’t like it either.
    That first morning when we got out alone, with our own wagon, we chase about fifty dogs and don’t catch one. The houses where we’re hunting aren’t row houses and the dogs run off between houses and into the next street. Joe Sagessa almost laughs himself sick watching us. We could probably have walked up to most of those dogs and picked them up. We both feel this would be cheating. We have to catch our dogs with the net to be dogcatchers.
    That afternoon we go back to our own neighborhood because the houses there are in rows. We manage to catch four dogs, including the dog of Mr Kohler, the paperhanger; he lives three houses away from us.
    The township had made arrangements to keep the dogs for forty-eight hours in the kennels of a vet named Doc Owens. We take the dogs out there and then quit for the day.
    When I get home, Mr Kohler is in our living room. He’s hollering at my mother. When I come in, he turns on me. He wants to know where his dog is. He says if it’s dead, he’s going to kill me. He calls me an Italian Fascist. I push him out the door, across the porch, and down the steps. I’m hoping he’ll take a swing at me. I haven’t knocked down a grown man yet. He stands on the lawn and tells me he’s going to call the police. I tell him I’m working for the police. I tell him it’ll cost five dollars to get his dog back because it didn’t have a license, the dog is a criminal and so is he. If he doesn’t get down there right away tomorrow I’ll slit the damned dog’s throat myself. He calls me a Fascist again. I call him a shithead kike. I’m about ready to start chasing him down the street; I’m wishing I had my net. My mother tellsme to come inside. I go in and she tells me to quit the dogcatcher job. I tell her I won’t; I’m just beginning to enjoy it.
    The next day we get twelve dogs. We’ve worked out our own system. We catch the dogs cowboy style, by more or less rounding them up. When we come on a pack we don’t drive up to them, we follow and maneuver them from street to street, till we get them at a dead end or a place where we can surround them.
    We’re watching to find out who the leader of the pack is. All those packs have one top dog. We watch for this when we’re rounding up the pack. He’s easy to spot because he runs at the head of the pack and the others look at him to see what to do. We concentrate on catching that pack leader, then the rest are easy. The way we do this is drop one of us, usually me, right in front of this dog. I stand there with the net down like a bullfighter’s cloak and growl at him. Usually he has to defend his honor and the pack so he’ll bristle up and growl back. Birdy, meanwhile, has dropped off behind him, perhaps twenty, thirty yards, and sneaks up through the back. By the time the dog’s discovered what’s happened it’s too late, and one or the other of us takes him. After that, the rest of the pack is easy. They stand still as we walk up to them or wag their tails trying to make friends. Most dogs are big cowards. We net them or pick them up. We figure we deserve the pack after catching the leader.
    We catch this whole twelve dogs between eleven and eleven-thirty in the morning of that second day. Twelve dogs is all the wagon will carry. It’s half an hour drive out to Doc Owens’s, so Joe Sagessa suggests we get some hoagies and beer, then sack out up behind the golf course. We do that and lie around telling jokes till about three, then drive over to Doc Owens’s with the dogs. Mr Kohler has already come and paid to get his mutt.
    That night, the cage is a filthy mess. Luckily