Chariots of the Dogs

Chariots of the Dogs

Remember Woodrow Stretcher.? The guy who lives in Mt. Pariah and operates the metal detector at the state capitol building? It turns out that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing—certainly in Woodrow’s case. I ran across him when I stopped at the Three Brother’s Barbecue Restaurant in Mt. Pariah for lunch one day last month. He was wearing a coat and tie (corduroy jacket and bolo, actually), so I knew something big was up.  Seems that the North Georgia Chapter of the Society to Welcome UFO’s (a.k.a. WUFO) was having a luncheon and Woodrow was the speaker. This is a small restaurant and the club meets at a big table in the middle of the dining room, like the Kiwanis or Rotary. Other customers who show up pick a table on the outer- most perimeter and pretend not to notice there is a meeting going on.   

To my surprise and dismay, Woodrow was introduced as the author of a new book entitled Chariots of the Dog Gods. Given the fact that he married his former mother-in-law and once lost an SUV in Lake Michigan, I had always assumed that Woodrow might not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Turns out he is a regular genius about some things–like aliens. Before I had even tasted my pulled pork sandwich, he had commenced telling this group about his remarkable discovery:  Dogs came to Earth tens of thousands of years ago from a planet near the star Sirius, sent here in an effort to civilize human beings before they destroyed their own planet.

Woodrow, according to his telling, experienced an epiphany while laid up from back surgery. During sixteen weeks of recovery, he immersed himself in the History and Sci-Fi Channel programs. Woodrow was pretty darn amazing. He told how he had learned about Erich von Daniken’s books about ancient astronauts visiting earth and how they had become like gods and helped the Egyptians build the pyramids in Egypt.

 Woodrow also noticed that in most of these endless tv shows about excavating ancient ruins, dog bones had been found- like in the Valley of the Kings- along side the Pharaohs!  With an intensity I had never seen, he drew his audience in.  “Maybe it’s the other way around,” he said in a raspy whisper, “Maybe the human remains are buried next to the dog-aliens.”  He said it came to him like a vision: “Earth’s celestial visitors were dogs. Nobody could figure out who or what they were because they were just dogs, dogs that were around us all the time and too familiar to notice. In one of those mysteries of nature, dogs communicated by telepathy and never learned to talk. Human beings were never able to listen, so the dogs had crossed millions of miles of space for nothing.

“Some of you older men can remember when the Russian rocket, Sputnik, went up with a dog on board in the 1950’s?  What happened to the dog?”  Everybody in the room was listening with their mouths open, morsels of food—mostly mashed potatoes—dangling in mid-passage. “The rise in abductions by aliens mounted sharply in the years that followed. I believe this was because the Russians allowed that puppy to perish in the quest for space. The space dogs were having their revenge” Woodrow was nodding his head like it was on a spring, confirming his own words in gesture, like some preachers I have seen.

“And crop circles! You know those huge rings of trampled grass in the English countryside, attributed to aliens. Aliens, yes. But dog aliens. Have you ever watched a dog lay down in tall grass? They always circle about, mashing down the grass before they finally lay down. This explains why there are no human footprints around the crop circles.”  Woodrow’s eyes widened and shone with amazing  intensity.  The conviction and urgency with which he spoke was—well—frightening. Nobody was eating now.

“You just think about it.” Woodrow challenged his audience, ” We always assumed that aliens would have special powers. All those horror movies and TV shows say so. Well, dogs do have special powers. They are telepathic and can sense when somebody is about to have a seizure. They sense where blind people want to go. They know when you are just thinking about getting a piece of fried chicken out of the refrigerator.”

 As the waitress brought me the check for my half-eaten lunch, Woodrow was tramping out the vineyards where the lore and love for dogs lent credibility to one man’s cathartic revelation. I vowed to myself to keep a close watch on our dog “Peachie” when I got back home.  She perks up when “Star Gate” reruns come on TV.