COLUMN: Chihuahuas take over home
Forget Kobe, where’s the metaphor, the outrage, the embedded coverage when you need it? “174 Feral chihuahuas” ought to be a catch phrase as worthy as weapons of mass destruction or political wrongdoing. We’re talking about 174 tiny, 10-pound packages with fangs of fury on death row in Burbank.
Apparently, I’m about the only one following this story since I have stumped most of my learned colleagues when I try to bring it up as polite dinner conversation. So, let me give you the headline news version. Almost everyone has heard of a little old lady down the block who has a few too many cats. Well, Emma Harter is a little old lady in Los Angeles who had more than 200 chihuahuas – not on her ranch, in her house. The dogs were so neglected and inbred that they had formed packs like some Lilliputian version of “Call of the Wild” crossed with the movie Willard set against the backdrop of hellish Stephen King directed versions of the old Taco Bell commercials where the 174 yapping dogs swarm through the drive-up window like demon locusts and feast on all the store’s raw meat while the employees and patrons stand on chairs and tables in horror, hoping that the feral frothing devil dogs get their fill of spicy taco meat before they set their sites on live prey. Of course, the newspapers didn’t say that, but I’m sure you would have thought of it yourselves especially if you drank as much coffee as I do.
I’m sure the PETA people have some revisionist view of the dog’s place in nature, so as I have said before, I invite them all to place a feral chihuahua in their pants. The science of the situation is that dogs, given the chance, will revert to their wild pack nature in much the same way humans will run stop signs if they think that nobody is looking. I have seen toy poodles with embarrassing pink rhinestone-studded collars teamed up with German shepherds and basset hounds chasing deer around the neighborhood. Dogs love packs.
I’ve always thought that we have a tenuous peace with dogs. They seem to like our food and couches but they have to be holding some sort of grudge against us for having bred them into such insanely disparate shapes for our amusement. I mean really, what twisted sense of dominion over these creatures would cause us to create pugs, dachshunds and chihuahuas out of the same genetic material as wolves? The 174 feral chihuahuas have a right to be angry. We bred them into the little mutants that they are today.
So I say, “You go feral chihuahuas!” Run free and wild to the bitter end. Your brief bout of freedom is far better than a life of lap dogdom on the crocheted caftans of retirees and other subjugators of pocket-sized hairless hounds. Run free and don’t go into some doggy 12-step rehabilitation plan. Run free wee ones. Run free.