I’d had that old dog for a long time, from way past my first marriage. I was sure going to miss him. He had a few little idiosyncratic oddities about him that didn’t exactly endear him to some people, like rolling in fresh cattle droppings and then climbing up on somebody’s truck seats if they left the door open. Mildred had always been after me to shoot him, but I never had. He was bad about pointing baby possums and then catching them and dragging them up into the yard and then eating them, and Mildred was always so tenderhearted she never could stand to see a thing like that. She just never had seen her cat in action, though, the one she’d let in the house to pet and sleep on the couch, get hairs all over the throw pillows. That thing had a litter of kittens last summer, and I was standing out there in the yard one day while she had them stashed under the corn crib for safekeeping. I’d been out in the vegetable garden cussing and mashing cutworms off my tomatoes. I’d cuss those little fellows and pick them off and mash each one under the heel of my tennis shoe. Those little things were green and they had green guts. That cat went out in the garden for a minute and come back carrying a little baby rabbit in her mouth. It wasn’t dead. It was still kicking. What she was doing was training her babies to be killers. She laid that baby rabbit down right in the middle of those baby cats, and they didn’t know what to do with it. Of course the baby rabbit was squealing right pitiful and all and it ran off first thing. The old mama cat ran out there in the yard after it and caught it again. Brought it back. Set it back down in the middle of those kittens. They started trying to bite it and stuff, growling these little bitty baby growls. That baby rabbit jumped up and ran off again. I stood there and watched that and thought about cats in general, and about what that baby rabbit was going through. She caught it and brought it back again and laid it down in the middle of her litter. They had enough sense to bite it some then, and it squealed some more and then jumped up and took off running out across the yard. Only it couldn’t run too good by then. She ran out there and caught it again, brought it back. They went to gnawing on it again. It jumped up and ran off again. She brought it back again. It was getting slower each time. I thought, Yeah, I ought to just go in the house here and get me about four rounds of Number 6 shot and load up my Light Twelve and clean these sadistic creatures out from under my corn crib. The only thing was they kept the rats away and I guess a man has to give up one or two things to get another thing or two, but I went and got me a hammer handle and put that baby rabbit out of its misery. I used to raise them a long time ago, rabbits. I was pretty familiar with the rabbit family. They were so cute when they were little. Just little balls of fur. They’d hop around there in the cage, eating lettuce, plus I fed them Purina Rabbit Chow, and they grew pretty fast on that, and it wouldn’t be but about eight weeks before they’d be ready to kill. They’ll dress out about two pounds of meat at that age. By then your doe’s bred again and expecting some more or maybe even having them by then, and they’ll eat you out of house and home if you don’t harden your heart and take eight or ten of them and a hammer handle out behind the corn crib and knock them in the head. I had some neighbor kids then. They played with those rabbits all the time. They’d hold them up beside their cheeks and just smile and smile and rub that fur with their faces. And here I was out behind the corn crib while the kids were in school, knocking rabbits in the head and dressing them and then telling the kids they got out of the cage and ran away. It finally made me so uneasy and torn in different directions I had to quit it. I gave my doe away and turned the buck loose, I guess the coyotes ate him. I was thinking about all that while I was riding around, looking for a drink. I knew Mildred wouldn’t be happy to see that dead dog in the yard. I knew she’d be happy to see it dead, only not in the yard.