House Party

House Party

Three dogs lit into the kitchen garbage with an intensity and joy that was almost unbelievable, riveting to those who saw it, from the start. The biggest dog, a black lab, was a good climber and also had the best method for opening the lid of the garbage can. He, it seemed, was doing the hardest work. He was being egged on by a medium-sized orangish terrier and a little black Chihuahua. The terrier couldn’t believe his luck. He jumped on his back legs pawing furiously at whatever the lab delivered to him. He barked for more. His shrill cries of joy filled the air.

One by one, the lab pulled empty packages of bacon, uneaten hot dogs, a box of cookies that was down to its scraps, and wadded up paper towels out of the garbage. The wadded up paper towels had been used to clean up the bacon, so the terrier and the Chihuahua lit into them as if they were starved and hadn’t had bacon grease for years. They ripped them into little pieces, swallowing parts of each towel in their frantic excitement. And yet, the lab kept delivering more: this paper towel was full of coffee grounds, which spread out all over the kitchen. And then there were egg shells, which dripped uncooked egg as they rolled around in the pile of garbage on the floor. There were containers with partly eaten lunches in them, and at one point what remained of Chinese take-out – the soy sauce and rice, they spread furiously around the kitchen, as they tore up the cardboard and tried to get at the little meat scraps that were tucked into the folds of the cardboard.

This wild hedonistic party was being recorded by a single cell phone, which had been propped up on a nearby table, with the movie function on, focused at a point about two feet from the garbage can. So, in effect, the viewers saw much of the joy of the dogs, tearing and ripping at the bacon package, for instance, or tearing up the paper towels, but they didn’t see much of the lab, except his tail, and the fact that it was he who actually pulled the food packages out of the garbage can. In other words, there was plenty of evidence that the black lab was the main culprit. But much of the time, you couldn’t see directly that he was doing it. The other two dogs excitedly waited for each piece, and barked at him to keep it coming. The terrier scrambled from one piece to another, barking all the while.

The lab was clearly being egged on by the terrier, and trying to impress him. The terrier acted like he had never been at such a party, never experienced such joy, never tasted forbidden delights like paper towels wadded up in bacon grease. He acted like he’d been cooped up all his life, going to obedience school, obeying his masters, and now, he was free in the world, free to do as he wished, to run with the bad dogs, to indulge in whatever garbage suited his fancy. He moved from one piece of garbage to another, frantically tearing things up and spreading coffee grounds all over the kitchen, but he couldn’t concentrate on any given thing, and in his haste he would often leave delicious morsels, not even seeing them, going from thing to thing in a desperate attempt to experience all the forbidden joys of life.

The Chihuahua, however, was more systematic, more evil, and more experienced. He’d teamed up with the lab before, and he knew how this worked. He knew how to get the lab to deliver to him everything he wanted, and he wasn’t bothered that the terrier got to some of it first. He also knew that there were chicken bones at the bottom of the garbage; he could smell them, and he knew that the lab was the only one capable of getting them and delivering them. But, toward the end of the lab’s frenzy, out came the chicken bones! Some had fallen into an empty donut box with a clear plastic window. Easy enough to rip up the box and pull the chicken bones out one by one. The Chihuahua lit into them knowing that the owners could come back at any moment, ending the entire party. It was a live-for-the-moment experience, like hitting the jackpot at Vegas. Get it all now while you can; you’ll remember this moment forever.

The owners in fact were nowhere nearby; they had gone for a walk, and it was a long rambling walk through the city park and wasn’t liable to end for at least an hour. Because the dogs got a good jump on them, an hour was more than enough to tear into every single piece of the overfull garbage can, and the cell phone caught the whole 55-minute rampage, somehow having enough battery and enough space to make a wild movie. In terms of pure food, there was no doubt that the Chihuahua had gotten more than his share, as he’d been systematic, ruthless and aggressive, whereas the terrier was in such an emotional frenzy that he missed much of it, and the lab, of course, was busy with the art of pulling it out of the garbage itself. The owner of the house, Angela, was actually the owner of only the lab, and lived with a number of roommates of both genders, thus the bad diet choices, but she had been watching, and thus responsible for, the other two dogs. She, of course, was a bit dismayed upon her return, to see her kitchen look like a tornado had gone through it. The Chihuahua belonged to Burt, the guy she had gone on the walk with. Burt was actually a little proud of his Chihuahua, for so aggressively rampaging through an obvious treasure. The terrier belonged to a neighbor; in fact, it was true that the neighbor had been quite protective of the terrier, and the terrier had never been in such a situation before.

It was the neighbor, however, a woman named Laura, who put the entire movie on YouTube, ensuring that the three dogs would be famous for the rest of their lives. The movie got over three million hits, with many people watching it four or five times. One thing that was riveting about the movie was that the action never stopped: bacon package, donut box, fortune cookies, leftover pizza, rat poison…wait! Did I say rat poison? Yes, and in fact, people became fixed on that rat poison, because it added a bit of risk and danger to the entire movie. The dogs were oblivious to the poison, and selective; they left it alone; they had better things to tear into. But there was rat poison in the garbage, and it was clearly visible in the movie; later Angela admitted that she had used it and thrown it away, and thought it was safe from the dogs, wrongly of course.

Another thing that made the movie popular was the clearly different personalities of the dogs themselves, who seemed like they’d never had so much fun in their lives. It was the party of all parties, the wild festival of greasy plastic and food scraps, spilled oil and coffee grounds. For most viewers, it was forty or fifty minutes of the wildest most uncontrolled joy ever witnessed. And the three had a mutually symbiotic relationship. The lab was enjoying being the provider. The Chihuahua, with his constant low barking, made sure that the lab never got tired, made it all the way to the bottom. The terrier in his frenzy made high-energy chaos that really set this off in the world of YouTube – it had something over your average movie.

One little scene at the end, however, showed a very remorseful black lab, with a very guilty look in his eyes, as his owner, Angela, scolded him for being such a bad dog. In fact, as many of the three million viewers pointed out, she was a bad owner, because she had somehow forgotten to put the garbage out of the lab’s reach, and had left three dogs at home alone with a garbage can full of chicken bones and rat poison. The pressure became so great on the local animal control people that they came and served Angela with a citation for endangering dogs, to make the point that one should not allow dogs to do things that so clearly endangered them. Angela ended up being remorseful, not because she had such a huge mess to clean up, but because she had a nasty little fine to pay, and she was famous around town; when she went to the Wal-Mart, even the clerks knew her as the woman whose dogs tore up her kitchen. So many people had seen the movie, so many times, with her face clearly visible in part of it, that she now had a kind of fame around town, where the movie had been seen perhaps more than in other places. One man even found her name and called her up, saying he was looking for a black lab, and hadn’t been able to find one, and figured she might give him hers, since she clearly wasn’t taking very good care of it. She got angry, though, and said she always took good care of the lab; she walked him, and threw sticks for him at the park, and always fed him regularly. She couldn’t explain his orgy of bad behavior, of course, but didn’t feel that warranted having the dog taken away from her. She loved the dog. In fact, she was glad to see that, after the severe scolding, things went back to normal, more or less, except that they were both famous now, whenever they did go on walks.

As for Burt, though, that relationship between Burt and Angela didn’t last long. They had just met each other, but by the end of the walk in the park it was obvious they wouldn’t be a very good match. Both were in school and both had busy lives of work, school, extracurricular activities, other things. It was his attitude toward the kitchen, however, that tipped her off. He didn’t care how much work it would be to clean it up, nor did he offer to help clean it up; he even seemed to get some pleasure out of his dog’s getting the better of some woman that he’d just met. She sent him on his way, and they didn’t see him or the Chihuahua for a long time. She also changed her living situation the following semester. Sometimes, having a dog meant you couldn’t be choosy about your housemates. But you could get away from the extreme kinds of things her present roommates ate.

She did stay in the house, though, until the end of the semester. For many months afterward, when the terrier came over from the neighbor’s house, he would bark at the lab and get into a posture of playing. When he did this, she could almost imagine, and practically hear, the terrier reminding the lab of the party, and wondering when they would get that kind of chance again. The lab, of course, maintained his utmost loyalty to Angela, bringing her a stick regularly, and maintaining his good-natured temperament, as if it never had happened. But he kept his eyes open, prepared for any possible chance that could come in the future. (9-16)