I was at my Kodiak house, trying to turn on the lights, as if I was re-remembering all the switches, everything was hazy and dark and none of the lights were working. It was dim. We had a dog named Friday from when I was 9 years old and in the morning getting ready to work I couldn’t find Friday and he hadn’t come home the night before, but I was late and had to get to work, always busy with work.
Later that night when getting home, it is dark again and I go out looking for Friday in the wooded-overgrown patch behind our house. In the darkness I find him laying down in a bush, he stands up, blurry to me and me to him, it looks like the right side of his face is completely caked in dried mud or dirt and looking a bit collapsed. He shakes drunkenly trying to stand up to me his master and for some stupid reason of which I instantly regret, I call his name “come here Friday” and he tries to make this happen and when he finally erects his wobbly legs. I can see amongst the dark night the openness of his back, along the right side of his spine there is a huge gash taking up most of his torso, with rib bones and what looks like an esophagus hanging out. Still alive, all this time. Barely, I wonder what I had to do at work that was so important.
I immediately walk back down to the house. My first thought is that I will have to get my .45 handgun and shoot him, but then I remember Jim and my mother live right next-door and they have experience in putting down animals, they also have a .306 hunting rifle which might be more effective. Jim, with my mother slower and walking behind us walk over to the front porch of my house. During this time Friday somehow hobbled down to the bushes right next to the porch where he lays waiting for us to kill him. Almost immediately a massive brown bear, come rumbling down out of the bushes from behind the house. It is his kill and perhaps he is protecting it. He is crazed as if his vessel carried rabies. Huffing and distorted he chases us, right into the house, even though we locked the door behinds us. His paws banging and sliding across the wooden floor down the hall and back not really following us, but rather exerting his will, snapping his head left and right.
It is at this moment I notice the house itself needs some upkeep, needs more light bulbs.
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