They’d roam around in the early morning knocking over garbage cans and spreading crap around. Daytimes, they’d usually avoid people and mosey around independently or sleep. Sometimes they’d even go back to the people who owned them; but at night they were regular wolf packs.
Once in a while they’d gang up on a kid or some cat or the garbage men and there’d be a big fuss in the newspapers. This happened just as we were about ready to get out of school that summer. I got the idea of trying to pick them off with my twenty-two. By then, I’m already a real gun nut. I don’t know if I would’ve ever done it but I told Birdy. He said we should go to the police and tell them we’ll work over the summer as dogcatchers. He already has all those canaries and big feed bills.
Surprisingly, the police buy the idea; the commissioner signs procurement slips and in only two weeks it’s all set up. They rip the back off one of the old patrol wagons, build a big cage on it, rig a wooden platform on the back bumper where we can stand with handles to hold on to.
They assign a sergeant named Joe Sagessa to drive the wagon and we’re in business. Joe Sagessa had been on the desk and isn’t too happy with the job but he’s stuck. He has a pack of hunting dogs out in Secane so he’s the likely one for the detail.
The deal is we’d be paid a dollar an hour plus a dollar a dog. That was a lot of money in those days. My old man was only pulling about thirty-five bucks a week as a plumber.
While the truck is being fixed up they send us down to Philadelphia for training. We’re just on the straight dollar an hour but we don’t have to do a damned thing but watch.
The township bought us gigantic nets especially made for catching dogs. They have short handles, only a foot or so long but the net part is almost four feet in diameter. They weigh over thirty pounds. There are racks built on the side of the wagon to hang the nets when we ride on the back.
Down in Philadelphia the dogcatchers are all black. They’re genuine professionals and one of them has been catching dogs for seven years. These guys catch dogs the way the Globetrotters play basketball. They made a real joy out of it.
They have a regular dog wagon, designed for the job; they can clamber around the fender and get inside behind the driver whenever they want. Only one of them at a time would ride on the outside. He sings out whenever he sights a stray dog.
They give us lessons with the nets first. They’d worked out left-hand hook shots, right hooks and straight-on jump shots. This last, they say, is for when the dog jumps at your throat. They’re having fun kidding around with us.
It’s all worked out like big game hunting. They talk about different dogs they’d gotten and about the big ‘mothers’ they’d had to wrestle into the truck, and they show us all the places where they’ve been bitten. They get a straight dollar and a half an hour no matter how many dogs they catch.
For a week we ride along on the back of the trucks with them. Now, down in Philadelphia, most of the houses are row houses, so they have a system for trapping dogs between the rows. When they spot a dog, one netman jumps off right there and the wagon goes down the street toward the dog. They drop another netman off beside the dog, and the truck goes on down to the other end of the street and swings around. The third guy, the one driving the wagon, gets out there. They all have their nets with them.
The one in the middle, beside the dog, sneaks up and tries a drop shot; just drops the net over the dog. This is rarely successful. Somehow, the dogs catch on and take off. Then it’s up to the netman at either end. The one in the middle hotfoots it after the dog to keep him moving. As the dog charges past the guy on the end, he’ll try to net him with a right or left hook shot. If the dog doubles back, he has to run past two nets. It’s a lot like a good baseball play where they catch a player off third base and run him down. Finally, the dog takes the plunge one way or the other and most times winds up under the net.
Then there’d be a lot of laughing and pushing the dog into the wagon. People’d start crowding around and cursing and if it were somebody’s dog, there’d be big arguments. They have a way of lifting the dog up in the net and dumping him into the cage. They told us one time a character came out and cut the net to get his dog. They laughed till they couldn’t breathe telling us about it. As soon as they’ve locked a dog in the wagon, they’d hightail on out of the neighborhood.
There’d been dogcatchers a long time in Philadelphia so there aren’t really any packs. What they need down there is a catcatcher. There’re beat up cats wandering all over the streets. You just never see a bird in that part of town.
These dogcatchers have girlfriends all over. After they’ve gotten seven or eight dogs they take off one at a time for an hour or two to go visit the girls. The rest of us would drive around. Sometimes if a dog looks as if he wants to be picked up, we drop off and try to slip a net over him. Most of the girlfriends are married and these guys would come back laughing and giggling and bragging but scared, too. There are all kinds of jokes about who’s the most tired. They’re actually catching dogs about three hours a day. The rest of the time they are, without doubt, the oldest established floating stud service in Philadelphia.
They’d ride around flirting. Women are hanging out the windows, leaning on pillows and waiting for them. They’d yell and try to get us to stop. The guys have on-going arguments about who has how many kids with which women. Most of the talking isn’t really words, more just smiles, looks, and deep throat noises. It sure looks like a hell of a lot better life than our fathers have.
At the end of the day, we’d go back to the dog pound. They have cages there and a setup for gassing unclaimed dogs. This means just about all the dogs they caught. Nobody is about to pay two dollars for a license and a five dollar fine to get out a dog.
They’d empty the wagon, then gather the overdue dogs into the gas chamber, close the door, a door like a safe with a twisting handle, turn on the gas, then go over and clean out the cages where the dogs had been.
Birdy and I are fascinated by the gassing. After half an hour, they turn on the fans to suck out the gas, open the doors and pull the dead dogs out by the tails. Neither of us has had much to do with anything dead. It’s hard to watch them go in live, jumping, barking, trying to get attention, then come out dead with their eyes open. There’s a special incinerator designed to burn the dogs. It has a long, movable grate they can pull in and out for dumping the dogs into the flames. They clean out the gassing chamber and the day is finished. They laugh and joke while they do all this but we can tell they don’t like it either.
That first morning when we got out alone, with our own wagon, we chase about fifty dogs and don’t catch one. The houses where we’re hunting aren’t row houses and the dogs run off between houses and into the next street. Joe Sagessa almost laughs himself sick watching us. We could probably have walked up to most of those dogs and picked them up. We both feel this would be cheating. We have to catch our dogs with the net to be dogcatchers.
That afternoon we go back to our own neighborhood because the houses there are in rows. We manage to catch four dogs, including the dog of Mr Kohler, the paperhanger; he lives three houses away from us.
The township had made arrangements to keep the dogs for forty-eight hours in the kennels of a vet named Doc Owens. We take the dogs out there and then quit for the day.
When I get home, Mr Kohler is in our living room. He’s hollering at my mother. When I come in, he turns on me. He wants to know where his dog is. He says if it’s dead, he’s going to kill me. He calls me an Italian Fascist. I push him out the door, across the porch, and down the steps. I’m hoping he’ll take a swing at me. I haven’t knocked down a grown man yet. He stands on the lawn and tells me he’s going to call the police. I tell him I’m working for the police. I tell him it’ll cost five dollars to get his dog back because it didn’t have a license, the dog is a criminal and so is he. If he doesn’t get down there right away tomorrow I’ll slit the damned dog’s throat myself. He calls me