The Killer Wa Wa

Fierce things come in small packages -- Picture courtesy Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I don't usually do personal material but feel inspired today. I grew up as an Air Force brat in a somewhat dysfunctional family. Won't go into the details of all that dysfunction -- it would be a lot of blog pages. We were a family at odds with each other; let's just leave it at that. The family was not so loveable, so we needed a surrogate love object. We invested a lot of love in the family pet, a chihuahua named Sugar. Sugar lived a long, happy life from roughly 1968-1985. She expired while taking a nap in the backyard, in the sun -- I can think of no better way to go.

In her younger years, Sugar was extremely active and well, volatile. "Sugar" is a misnomer because she was black, and she wasn't sweet. As it tends to be with toy dogs, Sugar was very territorial of house and car; she was also fiercely loyal and devoted to her family. Back in the days prior to self-service gasoline, Sugar would bark furiously at the Texaco attendant. She would stand on the rear dash of the Impala and bang her head against the rear window -- so intent was she on barking at the attendant. How dare he come near the car? If he actually came to the driver's window with a clipboard/receipt, Sugar's bark would accelerate to a frothy snarl and she would try to bite the Texaco man or his Bic pen. My mother would have to hold back the raging animal.

At home, it was no better. Sugar was all of 5 pounds and in attack mode all she might do is nip at the ankles of a blind-sided Avon lady. Some people would laugh but most people were terrified, even men wearing cowboy boots. Something about a maniacal black fur ball headed at your feet inspires fear. We knew she had these behavioral issues, so we'd scoop up the 5 pounds of fury and throw her into the master bedroom, closing the door. She would go to attack mode anytime the doorbell rang, so that was our cue to put her into bedroom quarantine. When the Avon lady left, it was our duty to let her back out.

I was only 15 and rather bored. I was too old for toys and too young for anything else. Therefore letting Sugar out of the bedroom was something I always volunteered to do. I would take last week's issue of TIME and slide it under the door, back and forth. It would come back with incredible canine tooth marks and slashes. What kind of ravening beast would do such a thing? I was horrified. Then, I would drum my fingers up and down the door. One can only imagine what was happening in the mind of a 7 year old chihuahua. She could just picture it in her dog's imagination -- an army of Avon ladies in the entrance foyer. All of them were wearing sandals and sling-backs; they had bare ankles needing to be attacked. How dare these people with facial products and moisturizers invade our house? It was an outrage.

At length, I would open the door and say "Kill, kill!" The furious fur ball would run into the foyer. The hair on her back was ruffled, her tail was in a crescent arch and her ears were erect. She would sometimes slide on the throw rug, into the door. She would huff around for about 5 minutes, checking behind couches and chairs to make sure all the invaders were eradicated. "The Avon menace has been subdued" I'm sure she was thinking. We never retrained her or very much reprimanded her for the bad, huffy behavior. I have to figure that my drumming on the bedroom door didn't help much either. These are the childhood memories I must confront -- the would-be killer 'wa wa' and all the havoc she wreaked. I've had pets since then, all of them better behaved. Somehow, it's not the same.

Chihuahuas are fun -- that's all there is to it.

© 2007 blogSpotter