Ginger & Wenda

The BBC reported an incident happened in New York, involving a street-cleaning truck, a man and his dog. The truck was the kind commonly seen in cities anywhere, wit huge rotating brushes that sweep the street dirt - scattered leaves, paper, tins, cigarette butts, towards an opening at the back of the truck, and automatically suck up the lot into the container inside.

This fatal day while the truck was going slowly on the street doing it's duty, a little dog suddenly got in front of one of those giant brushes by the opening at the back of the truck and - Shwooop! - disappeared within. The owner froze, stunned, with the dog leash dangling in his hand.

The scene recalled a film I saw years ago, " A Fish Called Wanda ", in which an old lady was walking in the street with her 3 little dogs, and a character played by Michael Palin was supposed to kill this lady. Being slow-witted and clumsy, he killed one of her dogs instead of her. He tried a second time, once again the woman was left alive but another of her dogs was killed. She got one dog only left, and I began guessing that the 3ed would most likely meet the same fate, just a question of how.

Well this time Michael Palin fixed an enormous block of cement onto some sort of a big and heavy rope, with the idea that the block of cement should fall on the old woman. As was foreseeable, the cement block fell on the dog, when the woman was tangled with the task of opening up her umbrella (it had suddenly decided to rain) while carrying on walking, without noticing what had happened to her dog, because the leash she had was the kind that lengthened and lengthened with every pull.

When finally, she turned and saw the huge mount of cement on the road and part of her dog leash sticking out from underneath. She collapsed and had a massive heart attack. To imagine that the advertising of that movie called it a comedy!

The difference is that what happened in New York was a fact. The owner was Robert Machin, and the ill-fated dog was called Ginger, a Boston terrier. Machin witnessed the horrifying scene he could never forget, he said, how he noticed a mighty jerk, and Ginger was caught twirling with the brush to disappear inside the container.


The similar part with the film is that the leash for Ginger was also one of those that lengthens and lengthens, for meters and meters. Easily let the animal get tangled with all sorts of obstacles, or even with another person, causing accidents to one or both. Or get strangled for instance should it get twined round a lamp-post.

Dog owners please take note of the danger, not just to your 4 legged friend but likely to yourself too, should you unconsciously hold tight the leash trying to save the dog and got yourself tangled in the middle.

Tags:Ginger,Wenda,Dog,Fish

• Current Mood: awake