Obviously we need help from a higher power. I dial the phone. After countless rings, Bootsy groggily answers. "Wake up and get dressed, you drunk," I shout. "We're going to the Blessing of the Animals."
As faithfully as a friar, she and her dog Pony meet me and my problem child an hour later outside St. Paul's Episcopal Church to attend the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, an annual celebration in honor of a guy who knew a thing or two about matters both canine and demonic. Pony, a gigantic but sensitive white German shepherd whom I've known since she was the size of a burrito, woofs an enthusiastic greeting and happily shoves her snout into my crotch. "How was your date with what's-his-name? Did you fuck him?" Boo asks, kissing me on the cheek. She is wearing a black, hooded sweatshirt with tiny devil horns, and giant Versace sunglasses. When Kate Moss dies and goes to Hell, I imagine she'll look a lot like Bootsy does right now. "Hush your mouth, you filthy blasphemer, this is God's own sidewalk," I respond just as Franny yanks violently on her leash while chasing a squirrel into the street toward certain death, popping my arm cleanly out of its socket in the process.
"You should try a choke chain on that dog," carps a complete stranger in an unconvincing facsimile of helpful neighborliness as I work my shoulder back into joint. "Maybe you should consider a muzzle!" I snarl at his retreating back. Sometimes I think having a dog must be like having a baby. Everybody's got commentary.
The copper doors of the church swing open and a smiling fellow dressed like an eighth-grade science teacher pokes out his head. "Hello! Here for the Blessing of the Animals?" When we nod, his grin widens. "Oh, good! Glad to hear it! Look at your lovely friends," he says, petting our panting companions. "We've moved the celebration to the parking lot this year. Here you go! He hands us a piece of yellow paper with clip art of a doleful kitten and a haunted-looking basset, and then we dutifully follow him to an unprepossessing strip of grass across from a McDonald's and a yawning pit of dirt. "I thought it was going to be IN the church," I whisper to Bootsy. "Maybe too many pets pooped during the ceremony or something," she whispers back.
As we stand waiting in the sputtering rain, one by one, people and their pets join us. Some are on leashes, some in carriers, others, like the teacup-sized Yorkie named Beanie Baby, are buttoned inside coats. "This is Ollie. He's a rag doll, which means he appears to have no spine," says an older lady with a flaming-red wig as she pulls a rubbery feline from the depths of a plastic case. "We're going to show him, of course." Imagining Ollie draped across the lap of the bearded lady in a traveling freak show, I nod sympathetically.
"Prince Charlie was my first, and then Miracle Baby came to live with us, isn't that right?" The elderly man clutching two shivering rabbits in a bath towel bends his head and kisses each on the nose. "Miracle Baby had a stomped spine and an impaled eye when Rescue brought her to me. We saved the eye, though she'll never see out of it. Now Charlie is her eye." He shifts the rabbits to his other arm and settles back heavily against his cane. "He pushes her toward the food when she can't see it. He takes care of her, right precious?" Franny lunges against her tether, rabidly attempting to devour this man's entire reason for living, as Bootsy and I exchange tearful glances.
"It's lovely to see everyone here! No lizards today? No birds? No rodents? That's a shame." The Reverend, swathed in a robe entwined with a delicate embroidery of leaves, finally arrives, stepping into the wagging, mewling throng with a beatific grin and a Band-Aid on his bald head. "I once blessed a tarantula, which I rather enjoyed." I kneel down and wrap my arms around Franny's wet fur, feeling her little heart pounding with perpetual thrill as the Reverend begins the ceremony. "O God, teach us to admire the beauty of the animals and delight in their cunning." Fran looks up at me with sparkling eyes and snaps lovingly at my nose. "To respect their strength and to wonder at their intelligence." Rubbing thoughtfully at the spot where her teeth pinched flesh, I ponder the wisdom of whispering in the Reverend's ear that my mutt might need special attention, but hold my tongue as Bootsy too stoops low, laying her hand on Pony's noble head. "Grant that our relationship with them may be both merciful and wise." And so we wait in the warm rain, all four of us, for blessings to reach our furry family in turn. It can't hurt, right?
