I took my normal route home yesterday from work. On a good day, I can be home in twenty minutes and yesterday the traffic was cooperating nicely.   Just a block off the interstate, there’s a pretty large intersection.  I don’t think I’ve ever not had to stop when I reached it.  Seems like the red light is waiting just for me to get to it and it’s an abnormally long red light.  So not fun!

So I’m sitting at the light and I notice a dog in the truck in front of me having a fit.  It was one of those little dogs that resemble a  fuzzy rat and are sometimes carried in old lady’s purses at the grocery stores.  Yuck.  Hate them. They give me the willies. Even with the windows up I could hear this thing yapping and for a funny side note…. The truck was one of those big-ass things.  Mudder flaps, bed full of tools, ladders and two guys sporting ball caps who looked like they hadn’t shaved in several days. A truck totally out of character for a tiny yapping poochie. I knew if the guys were out of the truck and bending over, it would not be a pretty picture.  Those kinds of guys.  

Anyway, this rat-dog was going crazy and had its sight fixed on something outside the truck, so I glanced to my left and there stood an old man with a cute black and white puppy in his arms. All cuddly and everything.  (insert “awwwwww” here).  I figured the other dog had spied the puppy was trying to say howdy.  Then I looked closer.

Now, I am not one to judge anyone by their clothes but the man was, uh, unkempt, to say the least. Wild-ass hair and scruffy long beard, brownish, greenish coat with ripped pockets… A shopping cart full of bags would not have been out of character, but no, he had no shopping cart. What he did have was a puppy dog.  A puppy dog PUPPET.  On his fucking arm. No.  Really.  I swear!  A guy with a puppet.  And the man was moving the puppet’s mouth and barking at all of us sitting in our cars. At this point, everyone stopped at the light was watching him.  He wasn’t trying to cross the street or anything, just standing there with the puppet, barking at the cars. LIke it was the most natural thing in the world. And driving the rat dog insane.

By this time, the dog in the truck in front of me was almost rabid trying to escape and get at the puppet.  He no doubt found the imposter offensive to his doggie sense of self,  or he may have wanted a date.  It’s hard to tell with rat-dogs.

The man holding the puppet wasn’t looking at the cars, in fact he was looking anywhere except at the cars, as if to try to fool us into thinking the puppet was really barking.  Once in a while, he’d rub it on the head, but the whole time, he kept barking at the cars.  CREEPY!!!!!!

Thankfully, the light changed and I drove the hell away from the circus but I kept thinking about that man, (Duh!  I’m writing about him so obviously I thought about him) and I couldn’t help but wonder about some stuff.

1. Maybe he escaped from a mental ward. There is a hospital close by so I suppose he could have just wandered off and nobody missed him. (Our mental health system is broken- we all know it)
2. Maybe he was selling them, but there were no boxes of puppets around him. Just the one with his arm stuck up its butt.
3. Maybe he is a millionaire, with nothing better to do than freak out people on their way home, tired after a long day’s work and wanting to have a quiet supper and glass of wine/beer/martini/whatever.
4. Maybe he was a clown in a circus when he was younger and was fired from his job when the circus made enough money to buy real dogs.
5. Maybe he likes to taunt rat-dogs owned by butt-crack guys.
6. Maybe he likes to taunt rat-dogs with the hope they will attack him and he can sue the owners butt-crack off.
7. Maybe he thought the puppet was really alive.  (Ok- that one freaks me out))
8. Maybe it WAS a real dog he had gutted and skinned and had a gun in its butt and was deciding which car to shoot. (uh, I was wrong.  This freaks me out even more than #6).
9. Maybe he is an ex-commando-gun-for-hire hit man who now wants to bring smiles to the faces of people instead of , you know, blowing them to kingdom come,  and he thought this would help  make amends for all the death and destruction he was responsible for years ago as an agent of the old Soviet Union. (Oddly, this one doesn’t freak me out at all)
10. Maybe he was just a guy who likes puppets and wants to be a dog himself.

I wonder if he’ll be there again tonight.  If he is, maybe I’ll roll down my window and  bark back..  just to see what happens.

Categories: life