Jim, my dog, and Benny, my wolf, go the extra mile
MAR 28, 2024
∙ PAID
There are many hills that extend from my house into the woods.
From deeper in those hills than I’ve ever explored arrived a tough young blonde vet. Lily. She opened an office in town and began treating animals.
I took her to lunch at a local café. I found out she didn’t vaccinate. That was a plus.
A few weeks later, Benny, my wolf, came into the house late at night with a gash on his leg. Jim, my dog, woke me up.
I put Benny in the bathtub, ran water on the wound for a couple of minutes, and then loaded up a bottle with disinfectant and sprayed his leg. I saw flaps of skin around the cut. I called Lily.
She came over.
She was a little surprised when she saw Benny lying on a towel in the bathroom.
“That’s a wolf,” she said.
“Bingo, Doc.”
“Will he bite me when I slice off skin and stitch him up?”
“No. He knows he needs help.”
She nodded and went to work. Benny didn’t move. He blinked a few times, but that was it. When Lily was finished bandaging his leg, he licked her hand.
We left him there and went into the living room and had a drink. Jim sat in the corner and watched us.
“What kind of operation do you have going here?” Lily said.
“Pretty simple. I write, sleep, eat, and walk in the woods with Jim. The wolf is friendly. He comes around with his pals now and then.”
“Sure,” she said. “And I’m Florence Nightingale.”
“What’s the problem?” I said.
“No problem. But when I was a kid, I raised a baby alligator. Had a few snakes. I know wolves. That one I just treated talks. So does your dog over there.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I assume the people in town don’t know, right?” she said.
“Right. How do YOU know?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve kept secrets all my life.”
Jim trotted over and stuck his nose in her hand. Then he backed away, sat down, and said, “Welcome to the Crazy Club, Doc.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Happy to be here.”
That’s how Lily and I became friends.
About a month later, she came to me with a problem.
Her sister, June, who lived in Chicago, had a 13-year-old son, Tommy. The kid was in a psych ward, the last stop on the line after a long court battle over his supposed decision to become a girl.
Lily assured me the choice had been guided by Tommy’s school teachers and a few Chicago “activists.” The mother, June, who was raising him alone, finally gave up trying to fight Child Services and the courts. She’d fled the scene and was now living in Florida.
Lily had gone to Chicago and convinced a judge to allow Tommy to come down and visit her for a month. On a trial run. To see if she could take the boy in and legally adopt him.
“Some kind of law-enforcement people will bring him here,” she said. “He’ll be on supervised release, which means I’ll have State idiots watching the kid and me. Not looking forward to that.”
“How far gone is Tommy?” Jim said.
“Well, they’ve taken him off psych meds. Gradually, I hope. I think at this point he doesn’t know what he wants to be. Boy or girl. He’s a talented pianist. Studied for a few years at a conservatory with a couple of famous teachers.”
“If we come up with a plan,” Jim said, “it’ll have to be pretty radical. Possibly dangerous.”
It was dangerous.
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