Birds do it. Bees do it.

(Originally published 1/16/2007)

When I was growing up my uncle had a big bird dog named Bo. I’m not sure how Bo came to live with my uncle’s family, Bo having been raised and trained as a bird dog, and my uncle, who didn’t even hunt, living on half an acre in the suburbs. Needless to say, Bo was wild and not meant for a life confined in a tiny backyard. Bo was not the type of dog any of us kids wanted to play with. He was strong, hyper, dominating, constantly in motion. A visit into the backyard would certainly end with Bo tackling you to the ground. He escaped from their fenced-in backyard on many occassions, having seen a bird or a squirl on the other side, and was strong enough to barrel through the wooden fence like the Kool-Aid man. Bo was a force of nature not to be reckoned with.

Until one day my uncle came home with an electronic shock device that he placed around Bo’s neck. The thing on Bo’s neck would send shocks through him everytime he got too close to the fence. I had the misfortune of seeeing how Bo adapted to that shock collar. He stood still long enough for my uncle to strap it on his neck, then made his usual dash towards the fence. With a yelp that was heard all through the neighborhood, Bo’s life as a hunter ended. He spent the remainder of his days calm, subdued, one solid lesson learned and adapted to. Bo never got near that fence again.

Despite animals being of a lesser intellect, despite the fact that most animal species have been known to eat their own sh*t, they are something to be admired for their instant understanding of danger and harm. If a bird sees another bird eat a berry and then that bird drops dead, the other bird makes a mental note to itself, "don’t ever eat those berries." If a mouse knows that there is a certain area of the woods where being eaten up by an owl is a real threat, the mouse avoids that area. You don’t have to tell an animal twice. This may kill you. This may hurt like hell.

But not human beings. I’ve woken up almost every Sunday morning for the past fifteen years with a vicious hangover. Yet every Saturday night I’m right back on that track towards harm, ordering round after round of drinks with about a dozen cigarettes sprinkled in between. I know that I’m going to feel like I was run over by a tractor the next morning, but I don’t stop. And we all do that to some degree. We eat food that we know will make us fat or sick. We buy things that we probably can’t afford. And the biggest thing we do that no self-respecting animal would ever do, we walk willingly into situations where we know our hearts will break.

My mind wondered towards that bird dog Bo recently as I laid on the couch in my underwear, recently dumped, mulling over in my mind every blatant indication that I was not going to walk away from that situation as whole as I’d been walking in. I was told repeatedly by not only my friends that I was teetering on the edge of a massive disappointment, but by the main suspect himself. I thought about Bo, how no one ever had to tell him twice, and saw myself in comparison, running towards the proverbial electric fence that is my life. While Bo gave up, tucked his tail between his legs and resigned himself to a life of unfamiliar calm and solitude, I just keep getting back up, ignoring what I know to be true, and shocking the hell out of myself over and over again.

Friends are always quick to tell you after you’re dumped that you’ll do better, that there will be a next time, that eventually it’s all going to fall into place. I wonder if Bo would’ve believed anyone had they said to him that he should keep trying, that eventually he’d bust through that fence like he used to do, that maybe if he tried just one more time then he’d be on the other side tearing a juicy black bird to shreds. But animals seem to know better. They’re not the gambling kind. Why would Bo risk the possible shock when he could just avoid the fence altogether? Certain of only one thing, that trying again will hurt like the devil, Bo knew that nothing beyond that fence was even slightly worth the risk.

Twenty years after watching that dog lose his spirit to that fence, I admire him. As Bo grew older, whatever fascination he’d had with what lay beyond the fence floated away. My uncle awoke one morning years later, a violent thunderstorm having passed the night before. The fence had been blown down by the wind. And despite all that freedom presenting itself to him in a flash of lightning, there was Bo curled up on his blanket on the back porch.

A life spent sleeping on the back porch versus taking my chances at the edge of the yard seems more and more attractive to me as I get older. Knowing that whatever move I make towards a relationship is going to inevitably hurt, leave me burned, possibly embarassed and less than someone else better that came along, the fact that I’d ever even considered such a risk seems backwards, animalistic.

I’m going to start watching more of the Animal Planet and less Dr. Phil.