If you've been keeping up with the blogs here at Crab Apple Cove at all, you're already aware that Uncle Percy B. Hand has been taking a juco course in creative writing.  It's just a rumor, but I hear that the juco is now considering changing the name of that course to Writing 101, being as how Uncle Percy showed them just how expansive the word creative can be.  In other words, Uncle Percy showed them a whole new look at language - a look the instructors had sure never seen before.  But Percy is coming around to actually being able to speak and write a little standard English, and the big news is that he's enrolled in Writing 202 now, an adult education night class.  I reckon you'll be hearing from him in person before too long.  Until then, I'm still his voice.

Percy B. Hand has been hanging around Austin some, and that constitutes a cultural clash paramount to placing a duck in a pen full of penguins.  About the only thing they have in common is that they both waddle and like water, and that's sort of how Uncle Percy is in the city - he looks and walks like everybody else, but that's about where it ends.  This story starts when Percy went over to the animal shelter (it shall remain nameless) near the lake, just to browse around and check out the dogs.  He took Biggie along, of course, being as how Percy hardly ever goes anywhere without Biggie, his constant buddy Chihuahua.  I should mention about now that Biggie is an unusual Chihuahua in that he's about as laid back as a dog can get without being unconscious.  He usually rides on Percy's shoulder, sorta draped there like a stuffed toy, but sometimes he rides in Percy's overall's front bib pocket.

Well, on this particular day Percy decided to wear overalls when he went out and about town, and Biggie ended up in his bib pocket with just the tip of his nose sticking out.  Like I said, Biggie was laid back, so he usually went sound asleep in the pocket and hardly anybody noticed him.  That's good 'cause Biggie tends to be a little grumpy when you disturb his nap.  So Percy went to the shelter and parked, then went inside and started looking around.  This particular shelter is a big place, and going through it takes quite some time.  Percy was poking along, walking along the cages and looking at the dogs and stopping now and then to pet one through the wire.  Biggie slept through all of this, never waking up once . . . until an employee, an animal cop who happend to be walking though the place, noticed Biggie's nose sticking up from the bib pouch on Percy's overalls.

Cops just being cops can be amusing sometimes, and this turned out to be just such a situation.  He boldly walked up to Percy, spun him around, and said, "Sir you are in violation of shelter policy.  No dogs are allowed in here."  Percy stared at him a few seconds, then pointed at a dog behind wire and asked, "Then whut the hell is that?"  This particular officer was young, too young perhaps to know that old people are often blunt.  But being a cop who often has to listen to smart-ass remarks, he took Percy's remark as just that - smart-ass.  "That dog is housed here, but the dog in your pocket is not allowed inside these walls."

Uncle Percy stared down at Biggie, still asleep, then said, "OK, then we'll just leave."  The cop shook his head and said, "Well, it's too late for that.  You're in violation of city ordinance DA456-2A, and I will have to detain you.  And, you'll have to turn that dog over to me."  Percy started getting his hackles up about then.  "You ain't taking nothin' from me, boy," he said through clenched teeth.  That wasn't smart, of course, 'cause the cop went into the how-dare-you-defy-me mode.   If you've ever smarted off at a cop, you know this mode.  Uncle Percy had smarted off at lots of cops, so he knew what was coming, and maybe that's what caused the big grin to start growing on his face.  If there's anything a cop can't stand, it's a smart-ass smirk, even if a 75 year old man is wearing it.  This kid cop took it in stride, meaning he took a big stride toward Percy, saying, "Give me that dog!"

This is about when Biggie came into the picture.  The cop grabbed for Biggie, woke him up, and suffered the consequences.  Biggie bit the shit out of him.  The cop screamed out in pain as Biggie proceeded to gnaw his way from his thumb to his elbow, and then up to his nose.  Yup, he went right up his arm leaving bite marks, all the way to his shoulder where he lunged at his nose and clamped down.  The cop started flailing at his face, smacked Biggie loose, and then went tearing down the sidewalk toward the office.  Biggie hit the ground hot after his ass, biting him on the heels as often as he could.  The cop even ran out of one of his shoes.

Uncle Percy finally got Biggie caught and settled down.  He picked up the cop's shoe and went looking for him, hoping to sooth things over.  The cop, thinking for sure he'd been attacked by a rabid dog, was screaming his head off at a couple of uniformed officers outside, wiping blood off his nose at the same time.  He was telling them about being attacked by this vicious dog when Percy walked up holding Biggie.  "That's him!  That's him!," the bleeding cop said, and that's when the two cops he'd been talking to broke down laughing.  That didn't help matters at all..

Percy went to jail again.  Even worse, so did Biggie.  The cops hauled Percy downtown for getting out of hand when they tried to take Biggie from him.  He spent the night in lock-up this time, but his daughter bailed him out the next morning.  No charges were filed, but Biggie was incarcerated at the animal shelter, undergoing tests to make sure he wasn't rabid or otherwise crazed in some fashion.  When the people there discovered that he was really just a laid back, loveable, little Chihuahua (unless you rudely disturbed his nap), they turned him loose.  The cop, too embarrassed to press charges of any kind, wrote his run-in with Biggie off to experience.  How could you ever go to court and claim a Chihuahua did all that damage to you?  He knew no judge in Texas would buy it, so it all ended up being pushed aside in the cause of common sense.

But . . . Uncle Percy is now a crusader for animal rights.  The last I heard, he's joined up with people who are trying to create no kill shelters for animals.  And he's working toward bettering the conditions inside shelters to where they aren't so much like jails.  Uncle Percy knows a little about jail conditions, and he says no animal ought to have to be treated that way . . . especially some poor hapless stray who got caught by the animal cops.  Uncle Percy never has been too fond of cops, but now that he's getting to know so many of them, he's decided they're not so bad after all.

And, oh yeah, he's got another dog now.  He went to an SPCA place and found a mutt named Jake . . . a cross-bred something or other hounddog.  He said Biggie likes him, that they took to each other right off - so he adopted him.  You'll be hearing more about Jake and Biggie later, I'm sure.

C. Duhon, 10/12/07