What Dogs Know

"This is the Oswald County medical examiner, returning a page."

"Hey... um... this is Engine 64, we're calling in to report a DOA."

"Okay, give me the details."

The fireman haltingly listed off the decedent's name and address, then launched into his report about this guy who had bit the big one after seating himself in his living room chair to snack on a banana in the middle of the night.  He had all kinds of medical problems, complete with heart disease, diabetes, obesity, emphysema, recent complaints of chest pain... all tied up neatly with a long lost history of cocaine addiction.
 
I was relieved.  It was early morning and I have to admit, I didn't really feel like venturing into the frosty humid air to view the remains of a dead guy who had suffered a heart attack during the night.  Statutes dictate that I don't really have to go to the scene of a death unless there's any suspicion or evidence that the death is due to anything other than natural causes.

I know it sounds weird.

It sounded weird to me too at first.  During my internship in the big city, we went out to every scene under the sun.  Terminally ill people who died in their nursing homes warranted a scene investigation.  Here, we just don't have the resources for such behavior. If a death is clearly natural, we don't fiddle with it unless the family goes bonkers with wanting an autopsy or there's a possibility of the decedent having some previously undiagnosed genetic disease. Although, out of sheer precaution and a hyperactive sense of professional survival, I still end up going to dozens more scenes than I probably need to.   But this one just wasn't getting me hot.  It sounded like the guy had all kinds of reasons to be dead and who was I to argue with him.  As the fireman spoke, I jotted down some notes and made ready to call the decedent's primary doctor and christen the entire episode another unremarkable case.

 I slid smoothly into my "Is-this-a-natural-death" line of questioning and asked the fireman about his "spider-senses".  Was there anything weird going on here?  Were his instincts buzzing?  (They love it when I ask about their "instincts"... every guy who works emergency services in any way, shape or form is absolutely certain that he has a finely-tuned bull-shit detector that borders on ESP.  Asking them about their "instincts" is always a good way to get the fire-guys to play nice... despite the fact that, in my experience, most of them are about as sharp as a roll of wet toilet paper.)

"Well...." the fireman stuttered.

"What... what's up?"

"Well... this guy... he owned a couple of pit-bulls, and it... well, it looks like they kind of... got to him..."

...

"Really?"

"Yeah, half of his face is gone."

"No shit?" I asked, momentarily forgetting that we were on a recorded line.

"None at all." said the fireman, who apparently remembered that we were on a recorded line.

"Okay," I said, glancing around the room for my jump bag, "Can you direct me in from 56th and Broadway?"

Sounding relieved, the fireman rattled off the directions. My decision to come to the scene meant that his job was officially done and he could go back to the station house and cook chili... or lift weights... or whatever it is firemen do when they're not riding around in their big red truck flexing for girls in halter tops.  Realistically, with a minor display of logistical gymnastics, I could have avoided the whole situation and left it for the police to thread through.  But I have to admit, I was unbelievably curious to see what two pit-bulls would do to a human body that couldn't fight back.

In a matter of minutes I was dressed and on my way, arriving in record time to my first ever pit-bull mauling.  It's actually fairly common for dogs to eat their owners, post-mortem.  People don't want to think about it, but the fact is dogs like to eat gross stuff.  They lick each other butt-holes, after all.  I theorize that when they're exposed to certain smells, a primal instinct awakens and they dig right in.  I've seen dalmations do it, corgis do it.  Hell, I can't wait for that crazy lady who lives downstairs from me to kick the bucket... not only because her cigarettes stink up my apartment, but mainly because I want to see that toy poodle that she dresses up in goofy little fairy costumes go all pre-evolutionary on her ass and help itself to a few bites of "mommy".  I can't think of anything funnier than seeing that dog in a blood-flecked pink tutu with a disembodied hand hanging out of it's mouth.

When I got to the house, the entire front living room was densely populated with neighbors and friends.  I glanced around and located a police officer I knew and trusted.  I getsured for him to join me on the front porch and we had our little pow-wow.

"Dude," I hissed at him, "who are all those people?"

"She said she wanted them here..." he shrugged

"Well... where's the BODY?"  I asked, noting that the house wasn't very big and since I had been told that this guy had died in his living room, he had to be somewhere nearby. Everyone I'd seen in the living room was still breathing with their faces intact, so they didn't fit the bill.

"He's in the back living-room"

"Umm... okay" I muttered, giving the cop my best are-you-fucking-KIDDING-me look.

"Yeah,  I know" he said acknowledging the staggering idiocy of the arrangement.  The family was way too close and we both knew it.  And I don't mean "way too close" as in they bathed together or anything.  Proximity-wise, they were way too close to the body.  Their access to him wasn't inhibited at all.  Any one of them could have simply walked around the corner and flung themselves, weeping, on to the faceless corpse. Death makes people squirrly, unpredictable, irrational and prone to some truly depraved displays of grief. It's always a bad idea not to have a least one door between the body and the family. They don't need to be subjected to hearing your detached, indifferent description of their loved one's remains.  And no matter how creative or professional  you are, there's just no way to explain your actions to a family member who walks in to find you've got their dead grandpa's pants around his knees, cheeks spread, checking to see if there's anything... unexpected shoved up his rectum.  

We stepped back inside and I introduced myself to the decedent's widow, a plump red-head who had the look of being an otherwise jovial character.  She gave me a brave, shaky smile as I explained to her what I would be doing, and she agreed to wait to talk to me until after I'd had a chance to take in the whole scene.

With that done, I crossed into a little dining area and found the decedent's body, sitting in a lay-z-boy, no more than 3 feet away from the open doorway to the front living room where all of his friends and family were seated.  I would have popped off with some exaperated expletive, but for the fact that there was absolutely NO isolation from the grieving family.  the firemen had at least covered the guy with a sheet and herded the perpetrating dogs into a back bedroom, but all the same I couldn't believe they hadn't cleared out the house entirely.  Seriously, what the fuck?

I pulled the sheet aside to survey the damage, and the fireman had been right.  From about the nose-level down, all the meat had been chewed off of the guy's face... right down to the bone.  All the strata of his soft tissue could be clearly seen, the fleshy epidermis, the billowy yellow pillows of adipose and fat, the stringy red loops of muscle, all pulled away to reveal the hard, sharp, pink angles of his mandible.  His lower teeth were naked of the lower lip and his tongue bulged out slightly from between his clenched jaws.  On the floor nearby, was the smashed cadaver of the banana in question.

"Woah" I said softly.

Though the overall scene was grotesque, the wounds had obviously been inflicted post mortem.  If his heart had been beating, and therefore moving blood though his arteries and veins, the body... and the entire room... would have been a mess of smeared carnage.  But since blood stops flowing when the heart stops, there wasn't a spot of it anywhere.  Furthermore, there was no indication that there had been any struggle at all.  The guy's hands, arms and chest were completely free of defensive wounds or marks.  His flesh must have fallen off the bone like meat from a well cooked lamb-shank.

The dogs knew.

When I was a kid, living in a charasmatic Christian home, there was always a lot of talk about angels and demons and other metaphysical entities.  One thing I had always been told was that animals, dogs especially, were acutely tuned in to "the spiritual realm." Supposedly, dogs knew when there were evil spirits about.  Or they sensed when a person was a bad-apple.  I don't know how true that is, but I have to admit that dogs DO seem to know things.  My parents had a delightful litte bichon-frise who loved everyone... except my boyfriend who later turned out to be a psychotic, cheating bastard.  Upon their first and only meeting, she shied away from him as though he'd been on fire.  And we all hear about those stories in which a dog rescues his family from a burning house... or mauls an attacking burglar.  Even in my own experience, dogs usually love me- but there have been times when I've been in a particularly foul mood and normally cordial canines have made a wide circle around me.  Dogs know things.  And in this case, the dogs knew the truth... they knew the guy wasn't there anymore.  I know pit-bulls have a nasty reputation, but the dead guy's wife swore that the dogs never would have "attacked" him, and I believed her.  I sincerely think that in their minds, the dogs didn't attack him.  All that was left of their master was... well.. it was a nice big hunk of meat- garnished with a banana... and since no one else seemed to be using it...

I explained this phenomenon as judiciously as I could to the decedent's wife.  And I assured her that the dogs were not going to begin eating people on a regular basis, at least... I didn't think they would.

"I've seen dachsunds do this..." I told her... exaggerating only a little.  The fact is, I've never seen a dachsund eat someone's face off, but dachsunds would do it if they could reach high enough. Of that I was certain.

I exited the scene as gracefully as possible... seeing as how I had just left everyone in the room with the impression that all of them would end up being devoured by their pets if they had the misfortune of dying with the animals in the house.  Oh well.

Death happens, you leave your body behind.  Dogs know... it seems they pick up on truths that remain elusive to the human race.  People are compelled do all kinds of wacky things with "remains".  We spend thousands of dollars on embalming and caskets and burial.  We smear the dead with make-up and dress them in their favorite out-fits in an effort to make them appear alive when they're clearly not.  We dedicate some of the best real-estate available to the internment of people who, let's face it, really have no right to be taking up space on the physical plane anymore.  We go to cemeteries to "visit" our deceased families when they're actually nothing but dust within a matter of months.  I once had an employer who would leave his mom's ashes in an easy chair in front of the television while he was at work.  Hell, I've even heard of people taking the bodies of a loved one to a company that will make an actual diamond out of the carbon in the cadaver.  I have to admit, I don't get it.  While I cannot say for certain what happens to your consciousness or your spirit when you die, I can sure as hell tell you what happens to your body after you die.  When you look at a dead body- you really know, that person is truly NOT there.  And would you bury a coat that didn't fit you anymore?  Would you go to visit the grave of the sneakers you wore out?  What remains of people is what they did, who they affected, how they lived... these things are not bound to an innert cluster of tissue and fluid.

Dogs eat dead stuff, whether it's a flattened bird in the street, or the leftover body of a person who doesn't need it anymore. Quite frankly, I think they did the widow a favor, seeing as how they spared her the expenses involved in a viewing and an open casket.  It may sound calloused, it may be sacreligious, I can't say I agree with their methods, but I think the dogs got it right on this one.  Bodies are leftovers... pass the ketchup.  

Here kitty, kitty...

"It’s a hoarded house…" the deputy mumbled to me- as discretely as possible, what with the family within ear-shot and all.

I nodded, careful to keep my face as placid as possible. That’s one of the tricks no one tells you to learn… one of the lessons you pick up from experience: look unruffled and distantly concerned…. But not too concerned.

If you look bored, the family will think you’re not taking their loved one’s death seriously. 

But if you look horrified, or astonished, or disgusted… they will suspect you’re judging them, judging the dead person- thinking all kinds of horrible things about them… which, of course... maybe you ARE, but they don’t need to know that- or at least they don’t need to read it all over your face.

If a family does feel judged, or "looked down on" they clam up like murder suspects and later complain to your bosses. Their accusations are usually vague, claiming "she was rude" or "she was unprofessional".  Once, I even had one guy complain because I was writing things down in my notebook. Specifically, he was upset that I made note of his wife’s statement that their dead son had a history of drug use. It sounds ridiculous but ultimately, even in the midst of an unfathomable tragedy, people are still concerned about "what the neighbors will think." I can't blame them, I suppose.  It makes sense that people are sensitive about the questions presented by a loved-one's death- they're ashamed of how they have to answer, and ashamed of the fact that this person died in a fashion that resulted in certain "dirty laundry" being aired in public. And it gets dirty- very dirty, as dirty as… a hoarded house. 

I had just picked my way through a jungle-gym of garden tools and lawn equipment that cluttered and choked the front yard and walk-way. I was standing on the front porch as the sheriff’s officer briefed me on what I was about to confront inside. As I listened, I watched the family watching me from the road where they huddled by their vehicles in the rain, arms around one another for warmth and comfort. They were checking me for a reaction, I knew.  None of them knew the details just yet, but they were well aware of the fact that nothing about this situation painted them in a good light. They wanted the whole situation to be "not that bad", and were watching for any sign of surprise or astonishment. This whole situation was going to suck, I could feel it. But I kept my face impassive as the officer relayed the story to me.

Inside was a dead guy… no surprise, since I was a deputy medical examiner and for me to be called to any residence someone nearby had to be dead. 

Fortunately, it was easy to stay poker-faced since the dead guy’s story was far more common than I think anyone could realize. The guy had been unemployed and living in that house with his mother for the last 10 years. While the other kids would come by and check to make sure everyone was still breathing, no one had actually entered the residence in over a decade. The mother had suffered a debilitating stroke a month ago and was moved to a local nursing home. The son, our dead guy, was being evicted from the house since he couldn’t afford the rent without his mother’s social security. Keeping with tradition, his sister had come by almost daily to make sure he was okay, but never actually came into the house. She would pull up to the end of the driveway in her car and honk. Then her brother would come out and give her a status update. She would remind him that he needed to get the house packed up, and that would be that. Except this last time, she pulled up and honked her horn, but no one came out.

The officer went on to tell me that the guy had a history of drug use, and at least 2 overdoses under his belt prior to this… the incident which we sanitized by calling it his "terminal event" as opposed to his "latest and greatest adventure with controlled substances" or his "epic fail" or his "personal quest for room temperature."

The officer, who apparently had not yet learned the "straight face" lesson, emphasized with a wide eyed grimace, "It’s REALLY bad in there!"

I had been eyeing the doorknob and suspected he was right. Doorknobs are one of the first things I evaluate when I enter a house. I’ve come to realize that the degree of filth inside a residence is directly proportional to the diameter of the greasy stain that halo-es the doorknob…. The dirt and oil from unknown years of comings and goings.  The residue from people's hands deposits grime around the doorknob- even just the slightest touch of a clean hand- will leave something. If people don't clean it off, or stop cleaning it off- or don’t wash their hands, all that crap collects around the doorknob like rings in a tree stump. This guy had the equivalent of a California Redwood smeared on his door. 


I took a deep breath, realizing it might be the last whiff of fresh air I may catch for a few hours, and swung the door open.

I entered the home with the officer hovering behind me, waiting for my expletive. 

I’m relieved to say, that while the house was, in fact, disgusting… I have seen much, much worse. Additionally, while our dead guy was undoubtedly past his expiration date, he was NOT the most decomposed body I’ve ever examined… not even close. The most decomposed body I’ve ever had to examine had long since re-discovered his role in the food chain and was the unwitting benefactor for approximately 10 generations of maggots and blow-flies.  This guy, at least, still looked vaguely human.
I resisted the urge to rib the officer for exaggerating. He was obviously new at the job and, by the look of him, barely old enough to buy beer. In fact, I couldn’t help but suspect his crisp, stiff uniform had been rendered so by his mother whom he likely still lived with. I’ve never known a guy in his twenties to look so "pressed" without help. That’s something you notice when you work with the police a great deal, you stop seeing the uniform and start seeing the people underneath them- and you realize how young a lot of these beat cops really are… adolescents paying their dues.


As I stepped into the littered front foyer, the boy-sheriff and I were greeted by a sergeant who had been inside, herding the decedent’s berserk dogs into the garage. The house was not so much hoarded as it was trashed. Clearly the guy would have been a hoarder, if he’d had more stuff to hoard. He had gotten as far into the "packing up" process as he could before clearly giving up and opting to instead take a handful of his mother’s leftover morphine tablets before he passed out on the living room floor. 

There were empty book-shelves and drawers, positioned haphazardly about the house with all the contents spread out all over the floor. Other furniture was tipped on it’s side. It appeared as though the guy knew these things needed to be taken out of their respective locations and packed up, but he forgot to locate any boxes in which to pack them. Each bedroom contained a bare mattress, piles of clothes, newspapers, shoes… and animal feces… everywhere you looked. The entire residence had been turned into a giant cat-box, and before you could sneeze and scratch at the hives forming on your face from being exposed to such a mess… the cats themselves began floating to the surface. 

I was in the master bedroom, sifting through a pile of blue-jeans with a pair of barbecue tongs I had found on the mattress when I spotted the first cat… staring at me quizzically from it’s perch on an over-turned 5-gallon bucket. But it wasn’t a cat… it was a kitten.


I don’t like cats, as a rule. First of all I’m allergic to them. Secondly, cats are neurotic, unpredictable schizophrenics who don’t have owners as much as they have staff. I tend to like animals that like me back (which may explain my ability to attract gamers, musicians and other fringe personalities.) Kittens, on the other hand, are a horse of a different color. There is very little in this world as endearing and loveable as a kitten. The sudden presence of that fluffy little face completely derailed my death investigation, and the next thing you know, my hunt for the dead guy’s driver’s license in order to establish positive identification was completely abandoned in favor of finding something shiny and fascinating to dangle in front of the kitten's face.


"Hey guys… there are KITTENS." I squealed to the officers who were, likewise, tossing the other bedrooms on a hunt for the missing license.


"Yeah, I know," the sergeant called back to me, "I’ve spotted at least two so far."

"Oh my GOD, they are SOOOOOOOOOO cute!" I cooed, extending my hand to the little black scamp, who was having nothing of it and leapt off the bucket, dashing back into the living room. I followed, deciding that the dead guy leaving his driver’s license in his mother’s bedroom made about as much sense as keeping a pair of barbecue tongs on the mattress. 

"I didn’t find anything." The younger officer said to me as he joined me in the living room. We both watched as one large cat, presumably the brood’s mother, wandered out of her home in the dilapidated entertainment center and stood before us with an expectant, almost polite, gaze.



"Terribly sorry about the state of the place," she seemed to say "I don’t suppose any of you could be troubled to feed us?"

I tried to refocus as the police officers went outside to question the family about tattoos and scars for identification purposes. I pulled out my camera and addressed the stiff and bloated gentleman laying on the living room floor. With each "click" of my camera as I photographed our decedent, another kitten meandered into the room to observe me at work. When I looked up, I had no less than 4 kittens, either lounging on the overturned television, or tip-toeing closer to me and the dead body to determine what was so fascinating about the stiff who had been lying on the floor for at least 4 days and was officially old-news in their opinion. I couldn’t help myself.

Click- and I had an adorable rendering of a kitten wrestling with the empty morphine bottle.

Click- and I had a darling photograph of a tiny calico kitten tentatively sniffing the out-streched, rigored hand of the corpse. 

Click- and I had a desk-top worthy pic of the little black kitten demurely seated on the dead guy’s chest with her tail curled around her feet-

The more photos I took, the more the kittens seemed to enjoy the whole "Kittens with Corpses" theme we had going on.

Eventually, the police came back in, and I had to be a little more… tactful with my photography. But I still collected a slew of pictures of the kittens climbing the filthy kitchen counter, batting around loose morphine tablets in the bathroom and I captured a particularly endearing photo of the kittens swatting at the sergeant’s radio as he waved the antennae in front of them.

We all had to thoroughly compose ourselves when we left the house to address the family about our findings. It was the first time I ever ad to employ the "keep a straight face" tactic because I’d had so much damnned fun.

Furthermore, I had to resist the urge to ask the family if I could take one of them home with me… but I couldn’t imagine how I’d explain to my husband (who’s ALSO allergic to cats) how I came to return from a death scene with a little black kitten that smelled like decomp.

"Please baby, can’t we keep him?" I heard myself begging, "he’s not just a kitten… he’s a CADAVER kitten."

I’m going to have a hard enough time explaining to my boss why all of my scene photos prominently feature a corpse, heavily decorated with kittens. But honestly, what are they going to say? Everyone at the scene was much more at ease due to the kitten factor. I think my own hard edged demeanor may have been dulled a bit due to the fact that I had spent most of my time "frolicking" through the scene instead of "trudging" through it. Maybe we can talk finance into investing in a crate of kittens for the deputy medical examiners and sheriffs' officers. I think there would be a lot fewer complaints.  Imagine it:

"Well, at first I was kind of offended by all the questions the medical examiner was asking me about my husband's death... things like, 'did he ever use recreational substances' or 'Did he have a history of depression or suicide attempts.'  I was GOING to complain... but.. you know... she had that kitten with her..."