A three-legged dog is easier to befriend when it’s a hind limb he’s got shed of. The gait is hitched, and the rear haunch follows a vertical parabola in an ungainly manner, sure, but when seated or laid out at the master’s feet there is little to betray the loss. You can get used to being in the presence of that kind of sadness.

Not so with Duncan.

The Tennessee cur’s front passenger side had been ruined while in the care of a previous owner, most likely a resident of one of the hours-distant cities, moneyed enough to finance surgical repairs, with plenty of options at hand to square his abandonment once the sight of the thing had worn thin. Duncan’s curved horizontal scarring, which he was fond of rolling on his brindle back to display, was reminiscent of the double mastectomy scars of my late Aunt Mildred, who in my youth had walked unabashedly shirtless through the clover-filled bottoms near the creek in summer, my brothers and I looking on.

“Ain’t nothin’ left to cover up, boys, and it’s hotter’n Hell’s own wrath.”

Damaged goods like Duncan are brought out this way from time to time, in waxed and well-muffled vehicles, backseats full of tearful children unaccustomed to the dust of gravel roads, to be set free from their comfortable lives, ceded to certain death.

It was Duncan that watched me now, hunched in anticipation and safely five yards distant, as I checked the traps around the house. The critters that these woods produce will decimate the foundation of a home in a single season if left unchecked, as the leaning attitudes of the pitiful and long vacant structures in the surrounding countryside would attest. First chore of every morning, before the bitter film of coffee can dissipate fully from the tongue, is to clear, reset, and bait the half dozen or so traps around this sixty-odd acre property. A .22 caliber pistol forged in the year of my own birth, 1930, the sole kind gift of an otherwise cruel father, has always accompanied me on these rounds. Groundhogs, raccoons, opossum, and the occasional skunk are to be found in the first weak light that trickles down off the ridge to my valley floor. They have been here for millennia; only Duncan and I are novel here.

As I approached a small paw-trap behind the ancient shed, the familiar refrain of a frantic animal locked in steel caused Duncan’s ears to stand tall and swivel front. Rounding the corner, I could see blood in the dirt path worn bare by many predecessors pacing the length that the chain allows, unable to free their tiny humanlike hands from the rusty grey cylinder. The clanging and scratching abated as I approached the raccoon, giving over to low, muffled growls, and I saw that it was attempting to chew through its own forearm in order to free itself. I stood, head cocked slightly, in genuine admiration of the creature, who had finally reached his last resort (for surely what chance has an amputee raccoon in the wild, with coyotes about?) and was hurriedly executing his will. I had seen the evidence before, tiny tragic paws still gripping rancid bait fruit, tendons damp and ragged in the dewy morning air, protruding with blood-matted fur from the snare, itself connected to three feet of linked chain staked deep in the ground. I had not once, however, witnessed the act. An amazing feat, countering eons of evolutionary programming. I looked on intently as the animal growled and gnawed. Brief survival via self-mutilation. An excruciating loss of a part to preserve the whole. No choice.

A sharp crack from the .22 silenced the raccoon, and as I looked back I noticed Duncan had crept ever closer as I’d ruminated, nearer than ever before.

I pulled the spring back on the trap, fished a few chunks of melon out of my pocket and traded them for the mangled paw in the cylinder. Duncan came hopping over to inspect our prize, pushing hard into its gut with his nose, snuffling and whining. I let him have at it for a minute or two while I chewed at a handful of sunflower seeds and looked out over the meadow, watched the breeze trace white lines through the green underbelly.

“That’s enough.”

I nudged Duncan away with the point of my boot, picked up the carcass, and headed to the bone pile.

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Tune in to Dispatches Every Sunday to Continue Reading “The Kindness of Strangers” by Lou Poster.

This is Lou’s first published piece.

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Lou Poster is a Native West Virginian, current resident of the poorest county in Ohio. Appalachian songwriter/singer/storyteller. Son of a third generation coal miner.