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Psychic Dog

When the Carthiginian Hannibal crossed the Alps on his elephants little did he dream that a model helicopter would one day fly over Phoenix Park in search of his namesake.

Before he went missing, Hannibal lived in the home of Bobby and Brenda, a married couple that had neither chick nor child after 25 years of marriage.

So, on the day of their silver anniversary, Bobby presented Brenda with a surprise.

He was called Hannibal, Bobby told Brenda, who asked why?

“I thought you'd like a dog,” he said.

“Why?” asked Brenda who could be single-minded when she wanted to be. On her 25th wedding anniversary, Brenda was sure she wanted to be single-minded.

What she didn’t want was a young dog that was afraid of its own shadow, never mind any dead elephant that might pass by.

Brenda had thought Paris when Bobby promised her a big surprise, last week, in the run up to the quarter century of being under the one roof.

He told her to think of the Alps when he smiled and left for work as a postman.

They didn’t ski because Bobby said postmen could not afford to have a broken leg and cycle a bike and his customers relied on him for their post, no question about it.

Bobby liked a good riddle. Brenda knew that from years of sleepless nights when Bobby propped his head up on the pillow beside her and urged her to guess at the answer, just once more.

In any case, Brenda very rarely understood the answer to the riddle, even when Bobby explained it a good few times to her.

So, it wasn’t a huge leap from a hint of the Alps to the capital of France, in Brenda’s imagination.

Bobby proposed to her on the Eiffel Tower and Brenda thought he might be like a salmon swimming back up the river to where he had been spawned; for Bobby was a man that did not stray very far.

Paris should be it, surely, she said to the bathroom mirror.

In turn, for Bobby’s anniversary, Brenda bought him a new watch. She ordered it from an internet site where it appeared very much larger than the one that was delivered to her pal Peggy’s house, up the road.

If it was to be a surprise for Bobby, there was little point in him delivering the watch to himself, so Peggy had obliged Brenda; as she had obliged Bobby himself on occasions over the years, unknown to Brenda.

Bobby married Brenda because she went out with him any time he asked her to do so in their courtship.

She married him because there was nobody else around not emigrating or involved with someome else.

As well, she married him because he had a permanent pensionable job and he brought her to Paris on a holiday just to propose to her.

She thought life was going to be all foreign trips and rampant hedonism, after that.

Instead, she got to hear why it was important that respect be paid to new stamps as they were issued.

So, after years of philately in the bedroom, the dog was not that exciting, really, as a present.

But Brenda grew to like Hannibal the pup and she took control of his life and well-being while he lived with her.

Now, dogs age at a faster rate than humans and when Hannibal was aged between two and three in human years he was somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one years in a dog’s life.

He felt he needed to get out a bit more and not be under Brenda’s feet all day, as you do.

But he had to be careful for once upon a time Bobby had brought him on his postal route and he had spent the day fighting off other dogs who thought he was attacking their territory.

He almost needed post traumatic stress counselling, Brenda told Bobby in her crossest voice when he carried Hannibal home.

All of which might explain how he came to leave home one March day when the wind was howling across any open spaces it could find.

On Saturday, in a lull between domestic battles, the two Bs agreed to take Hannibal for a walk across the Fifteen Acres in Phoenix Park.

It was the sort of day that you would not put a dog out in; but the humans muffled up against the wind. Hannibal shrunk inside his doggy fur and ploughed along behind as they argued their way along a well-trodden path.

About halfway across the open elevated plane there were some model aircraft enthusiasts pursuing their hobby.

It was a windy day on the ground and the long grass all pointed westward in deference to the east wind that came in from faraway Russia.

But if it was wild on the ground it was demented in the air. For the wind flew across the sky with nothing to slow it down.

Model planes took off from a grass runaway and gave themselves to the heavens. Control from the ground was lost quickly enough and most of the planes set a course for America and were never seen again, once they entered the Connemara Triangle.

But one big yoke, a replica of the biggest aeroplane that Boeing ever produced in Seattle battled the elements for a while before being forced to crash land on Hannibal’s unsuspecting head.

Nobody was to blame, particularly, for the mishap.

Not the two Bs, or the owner of the Boeing, or the wind, or the grass, or the park itself for the shock sustained by Hannibal as he crossed the Acres.

For Hannibal it was enough that all these circumstances conspired to attack him. He did what any one of us would do under the circumstances; he ran away from home.

Bobby remonstrated with the owner of the plane while Brenda clapped her hands and shouted “Hannibal” into the wind.

But the wind mocked her and threw her words back at her.

Hannibal ran before the wind towards the safety of the Furry Glen where he found shelter with the wild animals in the area know as the Wilderness there.

Hannibal never returned. He was adopted by a retired gentle woman who lived in a damp house beside the river on the Strawberry Beds.

All she asked was that he sleep in the hallway of her house and bark if strange footsteps approached their dwelling.

For the rest of the day the world was his to do what he wished with. And when he returned home, food aplenty awaited him.

As time passed, Hannibal often heard Brenda’s plaintiff calling of his name as she wandered the park looking for him.

A concerned Bobby crept through the trees with binoculars to his eyes in an attempt to see Hannibal anywhere in the distance; but he only managed to be arrested when courting couples in parked cars reported him as a peeping tom.

A model helicopter even flew over with a video camera in its nose. It was the Boeing’s owner seeking to make amends by finding Hannibal and returning him in safety to the embrace of Brenda and Bobby.

But Hannibal was not for finding, not even when Bobby turned up one night with night vision glasses and a raw steak to entice his return.

By then, Hannibal was warmly wrapped up in his new best friend’s house.

He had started courting a little cocker spaniel down the road and on a few occasions they had escaped for a romantic interlude in the Furry Glen before returning all bright eyed and frisky to their own homes for the night.

Nobody could tell Hannibal that he was not happy with his lot.

Unlike Brenda and Bobby who hired a pet psychic to tell them to where Hannibal had gone.

The psychic said she had spoken to Hannibal, whom she said was also a psychic dog, which would have been news to a philandering Hannibal.

She told them that he was fine and trying to make his way home. He had just wanted an adventure. He was alive and wanted to get back home, she reported.

So, Bobby and Brenda waited for Hannibal’s return, which like the trip to Paris was going to be a long time in coming.

For psychic or not, Hannibal was having a ball and was not for turning.

© brendan nolan march 2010

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