Duke's My Saviour!

Feeling guilty about my recent post "Story for Kele" when I told you about my German Shepherd, Duke, running away from home when Beer Baron's jungle detritus ended up in our house, because it gives the impression that Duke was a coward and useless but that sooo isn't so.

To set the record straight, he didn't run off right away.  It took weeks of endless assault by our newly arrived wildlife.  And I do think he took off because he lost out in some face-off with that strange and sinister giant feral cat we named Ghost, because his doggy-ego couldn't handle it. Although I didn't witness anything myself, I guessed something must have happened because, whenever I dragged him back from wherever his latest hiding place was, Duke would never go into the room chosen by Ghost as his home; obviously chosen for the sunlight through the window and the ledge he could sit on to watch the world and decide who would be his latest prey!

And after the Possum Wars got underway, we were so fed up that, as far as we were concerned, Ghost could take whatever he liked - particularly after he killed Mad Max - provided he left the frilled-neck lizard alone, and if we ever saw him even think about taking down the Delicates, an endangered species, we were on to him with the broom ... but the rest of the jungle-life was his for the stalking.

And don't think we didn't complain to Beer Baron Billionaire about what was happening.  We all did.  The entire neighbourhood. Never once did he turn up to watch the progress of his destruction of that wildlife haven without a bunch of us turning up to crowd him out with angry complaints. All to no avail. He was such a vile man, sincerely, and even the single person who was on his side and always stood up for him in neighbourhood meetings - if only because her daughter was currently backpacking around Canada with his son - gave up on him after one of his screaming rages about "You poor people have no right to complain to me.  If you don't like what I'm doing, get your lawyers to contact my lawyers !"  and since our entire hill was populated by Professorial types connected with the nearby University of Queensland, I don't think any of us were used to being dismissed as "You poor people!"

I did suggest we wait until he moved in and then, exercising the right of poor villagers everyplace, form ourselves into a lynch-mob to storm his house with flaming torches, like in all those films, but none of those scholarly souls were into it ... although the suggestion did get a lot of grim laughs because we were definitely all thinking along those lines!

Gosh, that Beer Baron was a horrible man! And, oh boy, did I laugh when I read, about fifteen years later, that he'd gone bust!  But I did feel somewhat sorry for our entire former neighbourhood when I later read that he'd sold that monstrous mansion to India's biggest Porn Distribution King!  Imagine sharing a hill with that neighbour-from-hell!

But that's all by-the-by because the story I really want to tell you about is one about my dog; one that shows how Duke was a wonderful, loyal, forgiving and faithful darling, brimful of courage-to-burn, and that I should remember him with a great deal more fondness and respect than I do.

It was early in the piece, when the first of the animals began their escape from the Beer Baron bulldozers to find refuge in our jungled garden - which I didn't mind - but also our house, which I did mind and a great deal too!

The Possum Wars had been going on every night for over a week, with crazy-angry possums fighting in the trees, on the roof and coming through the bedroom window to continue their bloody feuding right on our bed, and so I was exhausted and angry from lack of sleep when, one morning, I was in the utilities room at the back of the house doing the laundry, trying to get possum blood off the doona and sheets.

Duke was with me.  Back then, he was my dog and went with me everywhere, part protector/part pal, but this particular morning he was behaving very strangely, like some crazy-dog-hell-fiend, and, while I was loading the washing machine, he kept snapping at my ankles and lunging at my feet, biting and snapping.  I was in no mood for his games and kept shoving him away but he kept it up until, finally, I was so angry I kicked him in the head ...

... and it was only a second later that he lunged between my feet and grabbed something.  The most enormous snake I have ever seen.  EVER!  Huge!  And he then shook it to death.  Then laid it at my feet. Like an offering.

Unnerving, right?  Having a snake right there! Alive, it had been right at my feet the whole time and I hadn't noticed because I was carrying the load of laundry in front of me.  Oh man, my heart was beating so fast and I was shaking so hard, I thought I wouldn't survive the shock!  And I couldn't stop hugging Duke, my wonderful, gorgeous HERO!!!

Back then, I couldn't tell one snake from another and had only ever heard stories about what was what, and looking at that massive snake right there, dead at my feet, to stop myself from shaking so hard I started that self-talk, trying to "logic" myself out of the knowledge of how close I'd come to dying horribly, "I wonder if it really was dangerous?  I wonder if it really was deadly?  Only taipans and eastern and western browns are into unprovoked attacks and death-in-minutes!  It surely can't be one of those!"

So that's when I put the snake into a plastic bag and took it to a herpetologist-hobbyist neighbour for identification.

A western brown!  Yup, that sucker was one of the nastiest and deadliest of all Australian toxic wildlife.  And a mean one too, that attacks without provocation. Not nearly as dangerous as a taipan, sure, nonetheless this one kills even large-sized men almost immediately, with practically no time to get to help and rescue.

So that's what Duke saved me from.  A horrible almost immediate death!  And saved me from too AFTER I kicked him in the head!  What an amazing and beautiful animal!

Thank you, Duke, my wonderful Saviour!