Toad Smith was my best catfishing buddy, a guy so charitable of spirit that he would gladly give up two days of catfishing to help you finish your work so you could go too, and so much so the practical joker that he just couldn’t help himself given a chance to spread a fine line of stinkbait under the lettuce on your sandwich.
Then there was the Toad family dog, Gus, a black lab ‘bout 90 pounds. Gus was loved (“The intelligent son I never had,” Toad liked to say of Gus in the presence of his sons, John and Elliot), yet the subject of constant good-natured “abuse.”
Toad’s favorite was the meat trick. Now, Gus certainly was better behaved than Toad in most respects. But Gus was a pathetic, slobbering piece of jelly in the presence of baloney on white, rye, the floor, anything. Knowing this, Toad tormented Gus.
A baloney sandwich appeared; the world stopped. Gus didn’t blink, didn’t move except to follow the path of the sandwich. Salivary glands gone wild, drool flowed, yet Gus’s attention and expression were so set that the most lovely female poodle at the peak of estrus could not have distracted him from his beloved baloney—portion of doggy heaven. Don’t pet him, don’t scratch his ears. Just give him a chew, a taste, a succulent, aromatic, lovely baloney morsel.
But Toad had time. The sandwich rose and fell, a bite slowly disappearing as Toad monitored Gus’s agony.
One bite left, Gus crazy with desire, Toad, the sick fellow, raised the last bite to his lips. Surely this moment in a dog’s life is comparable to seeing your best friend about to go over a cliff. Toad would always stop suddenly, pretending he had just remembered Gus. “Gussy wanna bite?” he’d taunt. “No-no-no-no,” he’d tut-tut through a sly smile. And then the morsel was placed just so on the bridge of Gus’s nose.
Geez, Toad. Gus sat there slobbering pathetically, looking cross-eyed at the meat three inches from his eyeballs, an inch from his lips, a half inch from his nostrils. Force a huge smile across your face—grimace—and moan, “Woo, woo, woo,” without moving your lips. That was Gus: “Woo, woo, woo,” he’d moan two octaves higher than normal.
“Geez, Toad,” we’d all say, our mouths watering along with Gus’s. Toad would always turn to look out the window—Gus’s signal. The meat stood momentarily motionless in midair as Gus’s head moved in one barely visible snap. “Woof!” he bellowed in a resonant bass voice, telling Toad that he, the wily Gus dog, had outsmarted his dreadful master.
Cats after ice-out are like Gus and baloney. Obsession. Long winter. Torpid metabolism. Finally warmer water and metabolic movement. Food please. Food!
