Creature Discomforts

page with outraged marginal annotations. In a section about Rockefeller’s commitment to preserving the land from the depredations of the automobile while encouraging the public to explore the beauty of the wilderness, my father had commented, “If it has ROADS, it isn’t wilderness!!!!” A book called Trails of History was also his. On the pages about the paved road leading to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, he’d printed in vehemently emphatic capital letters, “PLOW THE G.D. THING UNDER AND PLANT TREES!!!”
    Settling at the table with a cup of fresh coffee, I tackled the notebooks and the bulging manila folders that I, in my previous existence, had left by the answering machine. As I’d seen yesterday, the folder marked Arsenic was jammed with articles about the legendary poison. The amount of information was more than my feeble brain could process. Arsenate was less toxic than arsenite. What was the difference between the two? Arsenic deficiency caused death in lactating goats. The skin lesions caused by arsenic were easy to contuse with leprosy. And...? The thousands of facts about arsenic gave no hint about why I’d amassed them.
    Two other folders, however, explained my interest. One, uninformatively labeled Coat, contained copies of what I now effortlessly recognize as e-mail. In contrast to the folder of facts about arsenic, this one was crammed with claims, insinuations, and as I soon discovered, conflicting reports and opinions. “Old-time handlers,” one page informed me, “used to use the stuff all the time, including on coated Hounds, but especially on Poodles.” Another person wrote that she’d been in dogs for forty years and had never heard of anyone using arsenic on a dog; the stories of its use as a coat enhancer were nothing but old wives’ tales. On another page, someone said, “I’ve heard it’s used by Poodle handlers to improve coat color in apricots.” My head reeled. Apricots? Oh, apricot-colored poodles. Okay. Person after person said, in effect, Well, I’ve certainly never heard of anyone with my breed dosing a dog with such dreadful, horrible, dangerous stuff and went on to suggest that I ask handlers of other breeds, including shelties, bichons, Gordon setters, Pekes, and dozens more. A knowledgeable-sounding paragraph declared that arsenic had no effect on the color of a dog’s coat; rather, the substance produced a desirable texture. Someone else claimed that it reliably caused thick, luxuriant growth. And where would a dog handler get the stuff? At any health food store, I was advised. At any pharmacy. At a shady pharmacy. At a feed and grain store. From any vet. From a disreputable vet. An obviously sensible person pointed out that years earlier, arsenic had been the principal ingredient in the medicine given to dogs to prevent heartworm infection. A scrap of memory came to me: Arsenic was still one of the drugs used to treat heartworm and certain other infections in dogs.
    What should have been the really informative folder was labeled Axelrod. Unfortunately, its contents, two pages torn from a yellow legal pad, had been scrawled in Russian or Arabic. Furthermore, the pages seemed to have been chewed by dogs. At a guess, I’d taken notes on phone conversations with Norman Axelrod. I’d printed his name at the top of the first sheet in the folder. “Wants exposé. Says handler dosing dog with arsenic.” Here, I’d had the foresight to print the handler’s name: Horace Livermore. “Mini poodle, apricot, Isaac. Says has proof, hair, nail samples. Dog on circuit with Livermore, finished, U.S., then Canada, etc. Contraband? Livermore smuggling to Canada. What?”
    At the bottom of the page, I’d drawn a big, wobbly arrow that I had no trouble in deciphering as personal shorthand for a conclusion I’d reached or an action I intended to take. After the arrow, I’d scribbled, “Ask Buck re Livermore.”
    On the second page, I’d written, “MDI? Insists must go there, but not the soul of hospitality.”
    After the arrow on that page, I’d written, “Call Bonnie re hiking article, Natl Pk that allows dogs, exposé???”
    Okay. Norman Axelrod had called to try to persuade me to write an article about his professional handler, Horace Livermore, who was supposedly dosing Axelrod’s apricot mini poodle, Isaac, with arsenic. Axelrod maintained that he had proof obtained from samples of the dog’s hair and nails. He also believed that Livermore was smuggling