Birdy

there’s a hose for cleaning off the squad cars, so we use it to wash out all the dog shit, dog piss, vomit and dog hair. Joe gets us lockers in the squad room where we can keep our work clothes. We shower in the squad showers and keep an extra set of clothes there.
    It’s almost like we’re in the police ourselves. It’s terrific beingable to handle those slick thirty-eights and forty-fives. Those cops keep them in perfect shape. Some of the belts and harnesses are beautiful to look at, with the ideal combination of sweat and oil, molded to fit the waist or the shoulder.
    There’re always card games going on. Joe introduces us around and they don’t seem to mind our being there. I begin to think I wouldn’t mind being a cop. A guy like Joe Sagessa is still young and ready to retire with a good pension. People might hate you but they holler when they need you and you get a lot of respect. There’s another idea I can write off.
    The next day we do the same thing. By ten o’clock in the morning, we have ten dogs including a huge German shepherd. This time we drive them out to Doc Owens’s first, come back to get our hoagies and beer, then lie around for two hours. That way we don’t have the dogs locked up all the time, barking, howling and crapping all over everything. In the afternoon we go out for a second load. We get eight more dogs. Joe’s having as much fun catching dogs as we are. He’s on regular salary, but that day Birdy and I split eighteen dollars in dog money plus the eight hours in salary. What a racket.
    Doc Owens is beginning to back out on the deal. He’s running out of places to put the dogs. His fancy clientele is up tight about having so many mangy mongrels hanging around. That first set of dogs is over the forty-eight hour mark, too, and nobody’s come to claim any of them except for Mr Kohler. Doc Owens makes us take them with us. Joe says he’ll drop them off out where he lives. That’s about twenty miles out Baltimore Pike and outside the township.
    The next day we get eleven dogs in the morning. When we arrive at Doc Owens’s he won’t let us unload. Joe is smiling like crazy. They’ve got mutts tied to stakes all over the back yard. It looks like a very low-class dog show. Doc Owens wants us to take those twelve dogs we got the second day before we unload any more. So, we go back to the police station in the municipal building and Joe explains the situation to Captain Lutz. Lutz phones down to Philadelphia and they agree to gas the dogs, butat a dollar a dog. There’s nothing else to do, so we drive all the way into town, deliver the dogs, feeling like real bastards, and drive back. By then, it’s too late to go out again so we wash and clean out the wagon. Birdy and I spend that night trying to think of another job.
    The next morning, we catch ten dogs in less than half an hour. The catching is getting to be the easy part. We go out to Doc Owens and he comes over with a worried look on his face. He blows up when he looks into the wagon and sees this really motley bunch of dogs, including a mean-looking Spitz. Joe jumps out of the car with two wires in his hand and a smile on his face.
    Joe’s system is simple but awful. He says it’s the best way and the dog doesn’t suffer at all. He electrocutes the dogs. The way he does it is to stand the dog in a wet spot on the cement floor in Doc Owens’s cellar. Then he shaves a spot of hair off the back of the dog’s neck and another spot just above the tail joint. He snaps alligator clips on to these spots. The alligator clips are attached to wires which join in an outlet plug.
    He hooks up one of the dogs this way, stands back, and pushes the plug into a 220-volt socket. The dog sort of jumps into the air, with its legs stiff and its eyes wide open, staring; then comes down on its feet, standing like a toy dog, its hair sticking out straight. After about a minute, Joe pulls the plug and the dog collapses into a heap.
    It’s a terrible thing to look at but can’t be any worse than being gassed. The trouble is you have it happening in front of your eyes. I’ve seen some cats smashed by cars but that wasn’t on purpose. This is awful.
    We’d reach in, choose one of the dogs, hook it up, the dog having no idea of what’s happening, and then ZAP , the end. Birdy and I hose the floor after each dog. We’re hearing rumors about the Nazis’ concentration camps; we’re running a concentration camp for dogs.
    We do all