Joey Sechrist

            The bat-faced animal welfare moms give me shit sometimes but for the most part people love what I do. I'm a conservationist and a conservationist is a historian. I understand the past and it impresses the guests who come to see my animals. This one? This is our pug. No it was not mutilated – they were crossbred with monkeys in Ancient China. Oh yes, very rare, only demigods and celebrities could afford them. And this is our gun dog arsenal: labradors, poodles, spaniels. They were bred to by the American military to kill the British and the Nazis.

But the pugs and labs aren't the money makers. My dog is. She's a Gray Bombyx and she has her own garden display. The guests adore her obviously. They ogle at her and want to touch her through the fence with their filthy fingers. They don't care about the risks when they see her, they decide in an instant they're ready to risk it all. I push them along to the gift shop for her sake. All they can say is "What a gorgeous animal. You're so lucky!" and I know that.

Then they ask, "Do you pet her?" Of course I pet her. I groom her every night and sleep with my face in her withers and my hand around her throat when she lets me. No, we don't make love. Her hair is so soft and silky it feels like liquid. Mercury. The first time I saw her breed I was turning five at the Clark County dog sanctuary. Mom pushed me in blindfolded so the first thing I would see was the Bombyx on display, and I just shrugged and thought every dog was like that. But once I saw the others I demanded she take me back to the Bombyx, and that's when I knew I had witnessed the type of beauty that's too big to hold all at once.

But I tell the guests I'm completely hands off so they don't go crazy with jealousy. Before the tour starts I warn them about the draco fleas and how it's impossible to eradicate them all. Everyone knows that and knows about the infestation that wiped out nearly all the dogs and then about half of us. Back then it was a lot of people. But most of them don't know that draco fleas aren't fleas at all – they're worms, smaller than an ant's leg, and they prefer to live in the testes. Yes, the little ants. They're impossible to eradicate because they lay eggs in the zygote and their offspring can live and grow inside generations of dogs before they eat their way out and wriggle into whatever warm-bodied animal is nearby. By the time we knew draco fleas existed, they were already living in people and that's why all our great-granddads had to get shots in their balls or leave the county and fend for themselves. That's when the Clark County militia formed and put up the gates. Luckily the shots worked but the dogs nearly went extinct, and now they can only be bred in safe conditions in dog zoos by rare expert specialists like me who are preserving history.

Isn't there a ball shot for the infested dogs? No, there isn't. Why not? I don't know and there's no recorded history about it. Could someone develop one? No, they couldn't. Why not? Because there's no recorded history on how you might go about doing something like that. Okay?

But I know my Bombyx doesn't have draco fleas. If something was wrong I would know it before she did. She's going to be the last one, probably in the world. She's not spayed but she's not going to breed with a gun dog for fuck's sake.

She doesn't understand her power and she doesn't understand what she puts me through to keep her safe from covetous hands. Last week the door of her garden display fence was open and she was gone. After investigating extensively I have concluded that she was forcibly removed by a bat-faced animal welfare mom in collusion with the peacekeeping militia. And the electrical committee. There would be no other way to scale the electric fence and open the door from the inside without cutting the power in a coordinated operation. When I reported my findings to the militia they said I probably just left the door open by mistake. Lazy idiots. I'd forget to take my head out of a hot oven before I'd forget my duty to her. Her gums were bloody when I found her. Her beautiful hair was mangled. She had been fed trash and abandoned. And they had the nerve to tell me she just ran out.

I know she was pet by many filthy wanton fingers. I try not think of who or when or what I was doing when it happened. I wash it out of her every morning and still smell it. My baby can't be unpet. I am a historian.

She doesn't want to join me in bed anymore. They traumatized her to make her distrust me. At night she just stares out over the county gates and whimpers, pawing at the window. She wants something back they had taken from us that will never return.

I've decided we must leave the county for her safety. I told the militia we have draco fleas so they've opened the gates for me. I let the pugs and gun dogs handle themselves and lead my Bombyx out to the long-dead seas of farmland. Corn and soybeans, our ancestors ate. Back when everyone was rich and fat and you could live anywhere you pleased. I want to know her soul so I unclip the leash and let her choose where to go. She bolts west and I follow my silver bullet.

Dog Zoo

Joey Sechrist is an adjunct English instructor and writer from Buffalo, NY. Their scholarship focuses on 20th century working-class women's writing and reproductive labor. They enjoy writing, house music, pickled onions, and speculative to-do lists.