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wasn’t on the sidewalk. Which I guess, in this woman’s eyes, made what I was doing all the more noble. We chatted for a bit about this, about how what I had done was so easy, how more people should do it and have respect for their neighborhood. All the things I had imagined people must think when they see me. It was a very short exchange. No extended dialogue about morals or the state of the world or anything. She then walked back into the building, and I walked away feeling very good about myself. I had been validated.
             
    That was all I needed. The confidence in knowing what a great thing I’m doing is back. I’m guessing that this article will inspire copycats. People will claim they wrote this article, and for the most part I’ll continue to go on being unrecognized. But some people—the smart ones—will figure out that I was the author. And when they do, they will probably want to tell me what a great thing it is that I’m doing. Let me just say right now that it won’t be necessary. Because I already know.

Lucas
    [Haven Kimmel]

    A FEW YEARS ago I adopted Bosco from a local rescue organization. Bosco was a frightfully attractive dog; he appeared to be some mixture of a Pit Bull and a Great Dane. So while he was lovely to me, to drug dealers he looked like a big pile of narcotics laced with money. How he was stolen and my search for him is another story, but while I was looking for him physically—walking into neighborhoods even the police wouldn’t enter—I posted his picture and name and tag numbers on the Internet and with the local shelters and vets’ offices, and that’s how I came to get an e-mail about Lucas.
    Lucas’s original name was Dewey, which sounds almost exactly like Bosco. And while Bosco weighed 75 pounds at seven months, Dewey weighed fifteen, and looked precisely like nonconsensual intercourse between a Pit Bull and a Chihuahua. So an honest mistake was made on the part of the shelter. (Both dogs were black, Dewey all over and Bosco in a few places.) The shelter sent me a photograph of Dewey standing on a concrete floor with his very large ears poised like satellite dishes, and even though the digital picture was blurry, I could see that a more abject look of terror had never been affected by a mammal. The accompanying note said, in terms barely concealed by euphemism, that the shelter was full and Dewey was going to be put down. He was an owner-surrender, and had come in with a Poodle companion who was also scheduled to meet the Reaper.
    At this point it might be interesting to pursue what happened to me internally, but it would certainly not be profitable, as all signs point to mental illness. I am moved to rescue animals the way others are moved to gamble, or collect aluminum foil, or take many wives. I just can’t bear it, the thought of an animal in distress and desperate for intervention when I have the power to intervene; to me all stray animals look like little war orphans. (My mother would point out here, perhaps a tad psychoanalytically, that War Orphan was one of my nicknames as a child, because I was scurvy-skinny and my clothes consistently came out of the dirty-laundry pile. Also the lack of shoes.) The older I get and the more resources I have at my disposal, the worse this becomes. Because what does it cost me after all? Some vet bills, a little extra dog food. I already have to vacuum every seventeen minutes, so what’s the big deal? Sure, my family and neighbors and friends fall down prostrate and plead with me to stop before Animal Control gets wind of my behavior and classifies me a “nuisance,” but I consider all of my loved ones to be slightly anal.
    I called the shelter at which Dewey was smoking his last cigarette and accepting his blindfold. The woman who answered the phone said Dewey had three hours to live, and the shelter was four hours away from Durham, North Carolina, where I live. I tried to explain the discrepancy to the lovely