somewhat parochial joke
Q: How do you know you’re living in San Francisco?
A: First thing you see when you step out your front door is a pit bull attack.
Actually what I saw was the builder’s assistant whacking the pit bull with a shovel. They were among a mob of people under the tree across the road, outside the house that the builder and his assistant are doing up. I think the builder owns the house. I was horrified to see the dog being hit and yelled “Hey!”
Then the pit bull’s owner, a thug in a wifebeater and filthy jeans, shoved the old man from the big Victorian down the street. The old man toppled over backwards like a skittle. He has a bad knee. This made me realize the situation was more complex than I had at first assumed.
I scrambled in my purse for my cellphone to call the police, but I’d left the phone on its charger, and then I saw that Michael from the warehouse was already calling them.
The owner and his mother collected their dog and took it back up to their house, directly across the street from ours. I know the dog. It’s a beautiful brindle, like Belinda and Cholla who I love, but I’m scared of this dog, because it growled the one time I approached, and it meant it.
Apparently the dog had been taunting a couple of other dogs in house that’s being renovated, so the builder asked the dog’s owner to leash it. The dog’s owner shoved him against the wall of the next-door garage and hit him repeatedly in the face, splitting his lip and cutting the skin on his forehead. The dog dived in underneath and bit his butt, hard enough to rip his jeans.
The builder’s assistant and the old man from the Victorian heard what was happening – you could hardly miss it, there was so much yelling and growling – and came running to help the builder.
The dog bit them both, on the knee and butt. That’s when I came out and saw the assistant belting the dog with his shovel, thus getting quite the wrong impression of what was going on.
We stayed to talk to the police. While we were waiting, the owner walked past us again sans hellhound, and yelled “My dog will protect me!” Probably not, after the judge orders it destroyed. Sigh.
