The Three-legged Dog
In the first of the boxy brick rowhomes caddy-corner from my apartment lives a three-legged dog. I sit at my living room window and I watch it trotting happily, albeit awkwardly, in its allotted portion of poorly kept grass. It hobbles up the steps and sits on the porch and then it hobbles back down to greet passersby through the chain link fence. Sometimes the four-legged neighbor dog goes over for a playdate and, beneath the shade of a towering oak tree, they wrestle with each other as equals.
Wrapped around the trunk of the mighty oak is a faded yellow band dotted with insect corpses. The poison glue trap is designed to kill spotted lantern flies but of course it takes the life of any bug unlucky enough to come in contact with it. After the three-legged dog goes to sleep, its bark is replaced with a steady zap-zap-zapping that comes from the yard next door. Each zap signals another unlucky bug that has flown into the neighbor’s electrified insect annihilator. Next to it is a sign in the mulch that reads “build something better.” Up the stairs behind it is a wooden plank painted with white letters that spell “welcome.”
To the right of the oak tree, in the distance, is an American flag flying high atop a building on Presidential Boulevard. To the tree’s left, also in the distance, is a red light blinking high atop God knows what. In the foreground, much closer to me, blue jays fly between a smaller cherry tree — mangled months ago by a crew protecting power lines from its limbs — and the nasty pool of tar-tinted water collected on the corner of my third-story roof. They wet their beaks without complaint and then return to their nests. The blue jays don’t seem to notice the tar, nor does the dog across the street seem to notice he’s missing a leg.
But, man, was I bummed when they mangled the cherry tree outside my window. It, on the other hand, is growing back now, and I can barely see the limbs stunted by chainsaw scars. I hear a zap, which means the sun is setting. Birds chirp while the blinking red light grows brighter and the American flag fades into the night.