nails in a dog

I had a flashlight and a magnet, out in the snow.  The moon was dead and cold.  The stars were barely coherent.  Bats and other parasites of darkness went in circles and strafed my ears.  At least there were no mosquitoes.  That was one good thing.  The mosquitoes had gone south for the winter.  Barbados, the Maldives, Tijuana.  

I found one nail.  Or rather, one nail found my magnet.  It jumped up and bit into it. I plucked the nail off of my magnet and held it.  A one inch nail with hardly any head.  I found another and another.  There were a dozen nails in the process of burying themselves.  The snow refused, halfway, leaving tail ends and points sticking up like headstones.

After I had gathered forty of fifty of the little nails, my fingers were numb.  The dog was camouflaged with the night, watching me from a distance.  My light shined on a chewed plastic box.  I searched for the number of nails on the ruins of the box.  50?  100?  200?  The label was destroyed.  I didn’t bother counting the nails I had in my hand.

There are nails out there in the snow as we speak.  I’d be willing to bet on it.  My magnet lacked the suction power to collect all of those little nails.  Plus, the dog may have swallowed some.  This idea makes my eyes red.  Dogs don’t know not to eat boxes of nails.  I know what is edible and what isn’t, but dogs, they don’t possess strong skills of discernment.

The dog snores under the desk now.  He looks like a sleeping dog.  He also looks like a sleeping dog with a few nails in his belly.  There might come an imminent need for a veterinarian.  Tonight, or tomorrow afternoon.  I’ve got no insight on the passing speed of steel nails through a K9 digestive tract.  I only assume it could come with complications.

There’s no point in being upset at the dog.  There’s not even a point in being mad that the nails were left unattended.  The deed is done.  I’ve seen human men swallowing swords.  I’ve seen fire breathers and heavy drinkers.  It’s possible that everything passes without trauma.  The only evidence, a bit of blood in his stool, a head of a tiny nail found shimmering in a mound of moist dung.

It’s not important to think one way or another.  Hopeful and optimistic, or horrified.  I suppose, if I had a magnet with enough power, I could hold it to the dog's belly.  Maybe this would cause more harm than good.  There’s a fantastic chance that I could coax the nail back, upward, through the throat and out the mouth.  Improbable.

I wonder what a veterinarian would advise.  They might suggest a series of x-rays, surgery, euthanization, laxatives, milk-bones.  While they’re at it, they might offer to neuter the dog for an extra sixty dollars.  It wouldn’t be too much extra work, once they’ve got him anesthetized and under the knife.  He’d be decorated with a cone that comes up over his head.  An exaggerated collar like Dracula.  The bottom half would be shaved and stitched.  We’d hide pain pills in slices of cheese and smuggle them into his body.

These are things I don’t want to see.  A poor, drugged dog, suffering.  He’s groaning and farting in his sleep, under the desk.  It doesn’t smell like a hardware shop.  But I’m no specialist, neither construction worker, nor animal doctor.  I’m only a man, concerned for a dog, angry at the conviction of tiny nails in the snow.