Wolf-Like
After he patrolled the town, found loose animals to live in the kennels, many in wire boxes built for kittens and puppies, he stopped the truck abruptly. One massive animal jumped into the road before him. Quickly, he pulled the pole from the back, attached to hooks, and ran from the truck. He followed the dog into the thick woods. Through prickly weeds, wet leaves, and brittle branches, he followed closely, until the furry animal darted gracefully into a field. Unfortunately, Peter stopped because his feet had splashed into the swamp. Now, he stood about three feet in the muck. It wetted his pants, smelled like filthy laundry, but he had stood in it before for his job. Regretfully, he left the animal alone; however it panged him, like a buzz behind his ears. With muck in his shoes, he headed back to the police department to deposit the dogs and cats behind him.
Thirty minutes later, he had secured the animals. With a sigh, he looked at the television, at the image of a wild animal, shaped like a lanky man, who bent, in human clothes yet without shoes, to bite a lonely female. With the barks behind him, he paid little attention to the film, and instead concentrated on the furry dog that had escaped unapologetically. Interrupting his plan to sleep, with no more thought to the wolf, he got a phone call. On the opposite line, a woman yelled frantically. Apparently, a baby had been injured. It appeared a wolf, or what looked wolf-like, had attacked a home, nearly killing a baby in the process. One additional call bleated into his telephone. That one, by his wife, told him that his own animal, a brown Cocker Spaniel, had left the yard. It wouldn’t come back, and now his lovely wife named Leslie hoped that he would find it. She bawled, but Peter didn’t quite understand why.
When he pulled into the neighborhood that had reported the attack, Peter burned like a flamethrower, and his face took a red shade around his ears and cheeks. Only his teeth didn’t become crimson with fiery anger and, yes, embarrassment that he didn’t stop the wolf earlier. He got out, and yanked the net from the hooks. Before he could look for the stray animal, he fell awkwardly onto the hot pavement, knocking his hat off his head, messing his hairdo. On his back, the gray animal, which did look like a wolf, bared its teeth. It offered large white incisors, like that of a tiger, not just a dog, or wolf, and bloody saliva. Finally, it tore a bite from his throat when Peter tried to subdue it with his hands, holding the fuzzy windpipe like an iron vice. It did little to stop the creature.
With a last effort, Peter stood, while the wolf ripped for his throat like before and opened a vein widely. It took just moments for fluids to spurt wildly, until Peter fell back, and landed onto his butt, like a boxer dealt the fierce uppercut, probably a finisher in any match but especially this one. The wolf continued to lick sticky blood and open the male throat, painfully.
Only the wolf didn’t run when finished. Instead, it licked the blood, until a shaggy animal trotted lazily to the scene. Before the husky wolf ran playfully into the bushes, and the Cocker Spaniel leapt into the truck, to ride to the police department, where it had lived before but not behind mesh, the dogcatcher offered words that brought yelps from the newfound animal, “My wife will be pleased.” Finally, Peter shut his eyes eternally, with his best friend panting happily above him. When blackness overtook him like ink on a white blotter, he understood the futility of his job. It would never end completely, not in modern society.
