CeJay - Progress By Tom Kelly Sometime in July, Patricia pulled a couple of young puppies out of the traffic in the U.S. Highway 167 construction zone right outside our office when they left the security of puppyhood and bolted the shelter where their mama had them parked underneath the building that houses Mary’s Diner just across the parking lot from The Piney Woods Journal digs at 104 N. Third in Dodson. One of the pups was enough like my former Good Dog, the late Clancy, that I made a pass at claiming him as a replacement. He became CeJay—Clancy Junior. Judging from the neighborhood pre-nuptial activity that preceded the arrival of the litter of which he was a member, I estimate him to have been born sometime around mid-May, making him about four months old in mid-September when I paused to reflect on his current state of development. CeJay seems to show a natural inclination toward squirrel tracking, which in the Piney Woods would make him a very attractive commodity if generally known, and if someone undertook to train him to the trail and the gun. He is, of course, of mixed hound-dog stock (he is officially enrolled with the veterinarian in Winnfield as “Dodson Street Dog”) which is not a derogatory situation in these parts, such as being an illegal immigrant, but rather to be prized in a land where hunting is a part of the culture. There are squirrels in abundance in our tree-filled back lot. They come and hang out by their toes and tails to rob our back-yard bird feeders, becoming fat little devils scrounging corn, sunflower seed, and various other goodies. I often sit with CeJay before daybreak, sipping my first cup of coffee on the backyard patio, shaded under a canopy of redbuds, crape myrtles, and way-overgrown shrubs while he prowls the back lot in search of exactly the right spot for his morning personal call. In the stillness, as the sun begins to reach the tops of the 25 or so 75-foot tall pines way out back, I often spot the skitter of motion as one, or two, of three of the little rodents sail through the pines tops like acrobats, moving up the fence line to the huge sweetgum, then across to the big spreading oak which overhangs the back of the house, from where it’s a small leap onto the mimosa and the redbud which shelters the bird feeder, the hanging suet cage, and the little wire cylinder containing the corn. They follow this routine throughout the day, making a circuitous route from the feeding station back through a clutch of overgrown redbuds toward the big cedar, thence into their refuge in the pines. Not too many days ago, a short while after he found his hound-dog voice and learned to growl and bark like a real hunter, I noticed CeJay on “alert,” sniffing and pointing upward, following by sight a couple of squirrels who had finished their afternoon snack, and were heading back to the jungle. At four months old, and no “training” except the effort—gradually with some success—to aim him toward the outdoors to take care of his “business,” CeJay begins to seem like a real dog. Unofficially, he’s about 14 inches tall at the shoulders, 24 inches long from nose to rear, plus another 12 inches of healthy hound-dog tail. He’s got enough skin to hold another fair sized dog, and his front paws are a good two inches wide. I don’t know the routine for training squirrel dogs, but it obviously will not include shooting one out of the trees here within the metropolitan limits of Dodson, since gun shooting is not allowed, of course. But if I do manage to knock one out of the bird feeder with my trusty pellet gun, that might qualify as training. Even if old CeJay does learn to hunt, it will have to be right here in the back yard. I’m not inclined to go to the woods with him, and anyhow, hunting these days is almost 100 percent a “club” thing, on tracts leased from the timber companies, and no outsiders allowed. My Famous Brother, who has recently made permanent settlement in Alamogordo, New Mexico, now owns what’s left of the original Family Farm out at Gaar’s Mill, and has most of the acreage in plantation pines. Anyhow, that place is ringed on all sides by homesteaders, so that a walk in the woods is not what it used to be. So, CeJay and me, we’ll grow old together, watching the squirrels harass the birds in the pine trees out back, and dream thoughts of life in the wild. |