An Eventful Month for the Santa Lucia Pack

 By Valerie Trigeminal

A couple weeks ago I saw two dogs in mid-coitus, and one of them was eating trash.  Now before I continue please don't think this is some metaphorical rant.  I don’t know why you would.  Maybe it’s my state of mind these days.  I’m a bit temperamental, and maybe a little cynical, but I actually saw it - an experience nonetheless.  Either way, how I feel is inconsequential, as this is a story about dogs, not humans, so relax, it's what they do and they both seemed to be enjoying themselves. 

These particular dogs belonged to a pack in Santiago de Chile that roamed together by Cerro Santa Lucía on Avenida de Miraflores- which is my street.  The bitch had a snow white coat...

   Hold on…before I get to the dog business, I have to tell you a little background about the place from an ugly American perspective.  First of all, the diesel city buses rumble down the street without mufflers and shake the plaster inside the buildings throughout the downtown area.  Noise pollution is ridiculous; big yellow Mercedes buses- but not luxurious- blast through the most meager side avenue and crash into other big yellow Mercedes buses as if they were matchbox cars.  The bus drivers are allowed to decorate their buses however they wish.  One man has the shape of a bat outlined over his headlights as if the lights were strong floodlights and he could get perfect outlines of a bat with the light from a mile away and summon the batmobile in the event of crime.  Another man- who I enjoy- decorated his bus with Arabic tasseled tapestries and a blacklight.  His attractive girlfriend took the change when passengers boarded.  He had neon lights along the side rails and pumped wild screeching Arabian music through massive subwoofers mounted on the roof.  The music was louder than the sound of the bus and I swear to god those buses sound like they use sand for oil.  To enhance the grating grind of the bus’ engine, most drivers like to keep the bus in first gear at all speeds.  Another curiosity of the buses is that they change lanes without looking and their awful sound is supported quite well by the several honks bleating from cabs.  I should say that in addition to the superfluous buses, the amount of cabs on the street is nothing less than the amount of water molecules in the Rio Mapocho.  And the only thing more abundant than cabs is stray dogs in this city.  There are so many of them- and they don't seem to care about people or buses or cabs at all.  They mind their own business no matter how flea ridden or foaming at the mouth they are.  I used to light up a cigarette anytime I came across a particular wolf-like starved creature late at night with no one awake to hear my screams as I was devoured.  I reasoned that animals hate fire and I could just scald him between the eyes to fend him off if he attacked.  But they always walked right on by.  I've never even heard them bark until what happened recently.  But I sure as hell can smell them.

Then something interesting started happening at the south end of my street where it t-bones the Alameda.  The dogs usually spend their time in Plaza Vicuña Mackenna across from the National Library where a couple priests and some women sing religious songs and preach on Sundays (the country is obsessively catholic).  I was going to get a book at the National Library but was unsuccessful because you can't peruse the stacks and must tell them exactly what you want and since I just wanted to see what books in English they had on hand, and that was impossible, I decided to ask for the first book that popped in my head but they couldn’t understand me when I said ‘Slaughterhouse 5,’ so I went back and looked up slaughterhouse in Spanish and said ‘Carnecería Cinco’ but they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about so I left in disgust, even though I went and bought a book in Spanish anyway at an expensive bookstore for 15000 pesos- which is 30 frickin dollars. 

Anyway, when I walked out of the library before I went to the bookstore a few of the dogs were standing on the sidewalk next to the woman who begs for money with her three little kids- I didn’t give her money when she asked but when she staggered away I felt bad and being brought up with Midwest morals on top of Catholic guilt, I reached in my pocket for a gamba (100 pesos).  As I was reaching into my pocket I heard a loud yapping noise which surprised me and then I saw the dogs getting a running start at the cabs and buses turning onto the street from the Alameda.  They would come up within inches of the front tire and see how close they could get or even touch their noses to it.  They seemed to be amusing themselves and challenging each other to see who could get the closest.  Some dogs would even touch the front tire with their nose before leaping away back to the sidewalk.  This caused a lot of commotion because the cars didn't know whether to stop or continue, and since no one had seen the dogs in the city behave this way, people on the sidewalk stopped and looked on in amazement.  I was also interested and decided to look for the cause of the dog’s rebellion against the traffic of the city, thinking they were irritated by the excessive noise and honking.  I was also watching to see if all the other stray dogs would join, because if they did, they would put up a fair fight against the 5 million people in the city.  Upon further observation later that night when I came home drunk from the bar and was walking down the street trying to look crazy like a derelict with nervous twitches because there had been a lot of thieves on my street in addition to stray dogs and I'm of the opinion that the best way to avert thieves is to act so crazy that you scare them away, I noticed that the few cars coming on to the street were still being chased by the dogs and that one of the dogs seemed to be orchestrating the entire thing.  Upon even further observation (after I lit a cigarette in case they attacked) I noticed that the dog the other ones were following was a female dog-a beautiful snow white dog with an upright furry tail, long coat and determined look on her face.  She was the only dog that looked like it had been bathed in the last 10 years.  The other dogs followed her lead and were all male short haired brown mutts with pointy ears.  It frightened me because it seemed that at the least inclination or indication of the female dog I would have been eaten as I stood by the whole mess of male dogs.  I was so scared that I began twitching for real and it was more convincing of my craziness than any acting I had done yet, and all the unsavory looking characters still out at that night took a wide berth when they approached me.  After a block or two I was finally out of the dog’s range and pondered the occurrence.  Since spring was just starting it seemed apparent to me that all the male dogs were looking for the lone female to be their mate and she was playing a few games to see which one would prove the most worthy.

Then a couple weeks ago (as I mentioned at the beginning) I was walking back from the movies with a sense of dread because I had just watched Mission Impossible 2.  In my mind I was pompously thinking about why all the movies now where absolutely awful.   I thought it was almost as awful as the smell of a bum’s piss that I had just walked by and I was admonishing myself for sitting through it just because I might be homesick and liked to watch the movie because it was in English (Spanish subtitles); then I thought that maybe I’d been around too many liberal travelers and should be able to laugh at a movie like Mission Impossible 2 and enjoy it for what it is, when I walked past Big John.  Big John is not a person but the name of the little minimart on my street which takes an American name to seem exotic and accentuate its American-style accessibility.  You can get what you need there at an inflated price and I bought my bread there- little cakes made with lard; I suggest you try it.  As I was about to go into Big John with a lighter heart, I noticed that the snow white female was getting fucked by one of the males.  She was eating trash at the time so she must enjoy the lard bread too.  So she finally decided which dog she preferred, I thought.  He probably wasn’t the best looking dog but he wasn't skin and bones like most of the other ones and had his tail clipped off- so either someone owned him and he just ran with the pack for enjoyment or he had an owner at one time and ran away from home.  Well, I found the scene hilarious but most of the people in the city have seen dogs having sex before and didn't pay as much attention as I did.  Hell, this male dog didn’t even get stuck.  Sometimes, a dog’s penis will swell and become lodged into the female’s vagina.  The dogs will try to do anything to get apart and it must be painful for the male dog.  I’ve never seen penises contort is such incredible ways- and the only way for them to get apart of for the male dog to ejaculate.  I got a few dirty looks when I was laughing.  I also wondered why the dogs were so far form the Alameda because I lived a few blocks up from the Plaza and they usually didn't wander up as far as my building. 

The next few days I noticed a change in the pack.  The snow white female and the mutt were obviously a couple and now they were the only two that chased the cars.  The other dogs minded their own business in the park and watched their friend run after cars with the female.  They had an attitude about them that portrayed a disdain for car chasing, ‘car chasing was a fool’s game,’ they seemed to say, ‘and we thought it was stupid even when we did it.’  The female and her mate were very ambitious and started running as fast as possible, barking wildly and touching their noses to the front bumper.  They were having a wonderful time and after exhausting themselves from the chase they would find a place to fuck- usually in plain view on the sidewalk as people had to walk around them.

A couple of days after seeing them having sex next to Big John's I just finished watching Austin Powers in Spanish on my 6 inch black and white television and I went outside to have a cigarette on my terrace.  I was pondering whether the Chileans were able to get most of the jokes after translation (television was dubbed) when I saw the two dogs by my apartment building.  It was late at night and the dogs next to the strip joint underneath my building.  The strip joint has a bronze statue in the door of a 6 ft 5 naked woman with legs shoulder width apart wearing a wig of 80s hair.  Occasionally I see some of the strippers going to work wearing feather boas, and the perverted man who runs the parking garage across the street always tries to get free glimpses through the door.  His friend and him point and laugh.

The snow white female glanced at the statue a moment and then went back to the cars.  She had developed a new technique for chasing the cars and it consisted of her starting in the middle of the road.  As the car arrived she would dart to the left tire and touch the bumper- barking the whole time, as if to say to her male companion, ‘I bet you can't do this.’  They were involved in a little friendly competition.  So this continued for the last three or four nights when finally at about two in the morning I couldn't sleep because of their barking and had really lost interest in the whole thing because it was certain which dog had won the bitch and it was also certain that they were having a wonderful time assaulting my street and especially my sleep.  I decided to go to the terrace and have a few cigarettes and watch them chase cars to bore myself to sleep.  The responses of the cars were quite amusing: some would blare their horns and some would slow down to almost a stop and some would just speed past (this was most of the cars since most of the cars were cabs and they had no regard for anything).  The reaction of the dogs when a car sped up was to chase it to the end of the street and yap behind it the entire way.  When a car slowed down they would keep touching their nose to the bumper and practically jump on the hood for the entire block.  When it blared its horn the dog was so adept it would not flinch and just touch the bumper with its nose and jump off to the side.  Late at night when there were few cars they would take turns.  The female on her turn would stand in the middle of the street and wait until the car came within a few yards and just as the driver would think to slow down she would jump to the side and bark like a fiend touching the bumper.  The male dog would run from the sidewalk as fast as possible on his turn, yelping like a coyote with rabies as he touched the bumper.

This particular night when I was watching, it looked as if the female dog had finally become bored with the male dog.  The male dog would try to coax her to continue the game but she wouldn't (it didn’t stop him from barking like an idiot).  Then the male dog tried her technique of standing in the middle of the road even though he was a bit frightened.  The female dog became excited by this and started to play the game again.  I have to admit that the male dog stuck in there even though he was scared because I believe he figured if they didn't play the game he would lose his mate.  They continued like this, and both dogs began to enjoy themselves immensely.  They romped around licking each other when there was a lull in traffic.  Then on the male dog's turn a cab was coming followed by a bus and they were both going at a good speed because no other cars were about, when the bus decided to kick into an extra gear and pass the cab on the left.  I cringed my face a little because as the male dog jumped to that side of the cab, looking only at the cab, he was smacked into by the bus with a dull thud and then a thump as he went under its right front tire and the bus hopped a little.

Now I must say again that this is just a story, an observation of something that actually happened that I’m relaying to you; if it were some analogy, he wouldn't have died happy and she wouldn't have stood over him so visibly sad.