Ringtail

I might tell you something seven or eight ways but I won’t tell you any lies. Ringtail was a pedigreed, Golden Retriever, bird dog. Her nickname was from a black ring on her tail. She lived with my cousin Willie Poole, a man whose porch light was on but nobody was at home. I probably should not say that but he just was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Once I mentioned he had on socks of different colors he said he knew that but he preferred to match his socks by thickness. His Momma had left him well off fi nancially and he never did work. Whenever he was asked or needed to list his occupation he would always testify that he made a decent living as a proofreader for a skywriting company. Folks would get really quiet and think about that for a while and then just nod. Well, I wanted to tell you about Ringtail she was some dog. I recall once when we had planned to go hunting down on the Pocomoke river. Willie could not get his pick up truck started. They fell to arguing like folks do who have lived together too long. I felt a little embarrassed but Ringtail was right, fi xed the timing and that country Cadillac fi red right up. Willie a bit spiteful, said at least he knew how to swim. Ringtail, being pedigreed and all that, she just lifted her nose, rolled her eyes at me and whispered, “a hit dog yelps.” Later that day we shot a mallard duck and I watched that golden retriever dog with the black ring on her tail go on her tiptoes out over the water to pick up that duck. I understood then what Willie had meant. Ringtail couldn’t or wouldn’t swim. What a fi ne hunting and fi shing dog She was. If you picked up your fi shing pole she went outside and started to digging up earth worms for bait. Pick up your gun and she would put in her ear plugs and fetch the game bag. She did not care for golf though. She knew if Willie hit into a water trap she would have to duck her head below the surface and retrieve his ball. Ringtail did not like to get her face wet. When it came to hunting you couldn’t fi nd a better partner. I remember once I shot three ducks with one bullet, I know that sounds impossible but not with Ringtail. She just ran around on top of the water and lined the ducks up in a straight line, one behind the other. I loved having Ringtail along when we went fl oat fi shing. She would run out over the water carrying a small glass bottomed, wooden bucket. She had thought it up and Willie had made the bucket for her. Every now and then Ringtail would put the bucket down and peer below the surface until she found some big fi sh. If they were in casting range she would fi rst fl ip a bobber over to mark the spot then she would back up and signal where to cast and how deep the fi sh were so we could set the line. After she would back up a ways she’d put the bucket down and watch the fi sh. Oh some times she would drop a line in with us but to tell you the truth she seemed to enjoy watching us catch the fi sh. If the fi sh swam out of range well she would just herd them back in our direction by splashing her tail. Just the tip though, I mean that dog did not like to get wet. There was one time Willie told me that they were fi shing over in the Tennessee river up above Chattanooga near Soddy Daisy, Tennessee when Ringtail came running off the river in a terror. Ringtail spoke up and said Willie would have been scared too if he had seen the Blue Catfi sh she had seen. Both of them started in telling about that adventure. As I recall the story, there had been rumors for years of a big catfi sh that swam back and forth between Chattanooga and Soddy Daisy. The Tennessee River has two big bends and the river widens considerably at those two communities. The catfi sh was so large that he liked lots of room to make his turns. He’d swim south to Chattanooga turn and swim north to Soddy Daisy and turn around again. If he turned anywhere else he would scrape his sides. Old timers said that sometimes he’d swim over to Alabama and stay for a spell if folks got to bothering him too much. Most of the time he could only be seen at dusk or dawn. Folks had taken to calling that catfi sh Grand-daddy Roberts after a popular local politician and country singer named Dalton Roberts. Well those two decided to catch that fi sh. I never did fi gure who came up with what part of the plan. If one thought of an idea for part of the plan the other would recollect mentioning something years earlier that had fomented in the other’s head like a compost heap and directly contributed to the other’s later creation of the idea. This type of dialogue went on all the time. I believe those two could have spent years talking about who said what to whom. However, Willie’s fi ve year old niece Rachel apparently was visiting with Violet his Moma and after listening to Willie and Ringtail argue, Rachel laid out the plan. What I pieced together was they got a logging chain, rented a barge with a crane hoist and hired a blacksmith shop to build a humongous three pronged snatch hook out of a ship’s anchor. Up near but below Soddy Daisy in a deep spot, Ringtail had located, they laid down the logging chain with the snatch hook on the end where Grand-daddy Roberts would swim over. The other end of the chain they attached to the barge’s crane. The barge they secured with several anchors and steel cables over to both river banks where they were attached to some big oak trees. The plan was for Ringtail to scout, that morning before dawn, using an infrared light attached under the glass bottomed bucket. That way she could see that catfi sh and track Grand-daddy Roberts. When Ringtail gave the signal Willie was to yank up the snatch hook. It was a big plan that almost worked. They hooked Grand- daddy Roberts just after he had made his turn up at Soddy Daisy and was heading south. Ringtail said he was hooked back near the tail. The timing was just a tad off in pulling up that three pronged snatch hook but one of the prongs got him. Granddaddy Roberts got to the end of the chain and for about ten minutes the crane on the barge was pulling him in and I mean he was giving them a fi ght. Suddenly he swished his tail and the prong on the hook busted clean through. The catfi sh did not turn around at Chattanooga but kept heading south and was last seen down in Alabama. The hook’s tempered steel prong was six inches thick where it broke. This all happened a long time ago before sport fi shing had gotten started. Today any fi sher woman worth her salt would have told them they should never have tied down the barge. With a big fi sh, you need to play them some in order to catch them. With the barge on as a drag the prong would never had busted. It’s hard to believe but I have seen it that fi shing hook with the busted prong. Outside and north of Oak Ridge and Knoxville, Tennessee along I-75 there is a place called the Appalachian Museum that is fi lled with antique log cabins and buildings which are fi lled with antiques. In the second barn where they have the old time fi shing gear and next to the fi shing gigs you can see that huge snatch hook with the one busted prong. Above the snatch hook hanging on the wall is a framed photograph of a huge catfi sh and you can see a tear near his tail fl uke with the steel barb from the snatch hook still imbedded. I have been there, I have seen it. I remember the time like it was yesterday when they shared that story. In the evenings when we would sit around and tell stories Ringtail would always retell her favorite story about her brother. The one who became a seeing eye dog and how his master, who was blind, would go into a store, pick him up and turn him around and around in the air until a sales clerk would ask if they could be of service. Then his master would laugh and say, “no, I’m just looking around.” To tell you the truth sometimes that story after several tellings would get kind of monotonous but she was some dog. I’ll never forget our last sad hunting trip together. Willie and I were after a bear and Ringtail had crossed a small creek. She fl ushed up a pheasant, just for practice you know. She was chasing that bird when all of a sudden she tried to stop. We could see her claws kicking up dust as she tried to dig into reverse. If there was one thing that poor dog was scared of it was snakes and Ringtail had seen a poisonous, copperhead snake. Ringtail died that day. No, not from snake bite though. She stopped so fast that ring of black fur on her tail slid up over her body, around her neck and before we could get to her she had choked to death. We’d tried CPR but we were too late. I was a young teenager then But that was a lesson in life. Sometimes quick stops can be dangerous.