Anyway, earlier this week I was sitting at my computer when a dog went barking by on the road outside.
It was one of those wonderful days, not too hot or cold, when people drive with their windows rolled down, and their dogs hang their heads out, just waiting to get clobbered by a passing stop sign.
I live on a road that is fairly busy twice a day. It connects two cities with dense but small populations. In the morning cars rush by going either west toward the battery plant, or eastward to the Amazon distribution center. Evenings the traffic pattern switches 180 degrees as everyone heads home.
This particular day the dog went barking by at around 1pm, no doubt hanging its head out the window, ears pinned in the wind. It continued a string of barks unchanging in volume or duration, like a broken record, if you’re old enough to know what that means. The only variation was a change in pitch due to a small Doppler Effect as the car neared my home and then rushed by. It was like this:
… arf arf arf arf arf arF aRF ARF ARF ARF ARf Arf arf arf arf arf arf arf …
You get the picture.
What the heck was this dog barking at? The driver was totally ignoring the dog, his mind no doubt fixed on his flight toward the battery plant.
The incessant, unchanging barking intrigued me. It wasn’t like the dog was fending off intruders, or focusing on one single point of interest. It was just barking at the world.
I headed over to Google Translate to find out what it was all about. In the left menu I chose “the “Dog,” and “American Standard Human” in the right. Then I inserted the text of the dog’s speech. The part that I had heard anyway: arf, arf, arf,…
It translated roughly to this:
Oh my god! Would you look at that! Did you see that? It’s a frickin’ cat! Stop the car. Oh my god, there’s a dead deer in the road, right over…Holy shit, what’s that smell? Did you smell that? Oh my God! Stop the car! Stop the car! STOP. THE CAR. Thats the biggest pile of horse shit I’ve ever seen! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you smell that! Stop the frickin’…
That was what it was: the dog barking at the world. Like the first day of spring or something.
I imagined the dog at home later, talking with the cat.
Dog: Yeah, seriously. I nearly jumped out of the car. If I hadn’t done that last year and broken a femur I’d a been rolling in that stank. I just couldn’t believe Numb Nuts just kept driving. Like he didn’t even notice it.
Cat: Lame.
Dog: I kept telling him, Stop the frickin’ car. Nothing. Crickets.
Car: I hear you man. Guys got dry food for brains. Speaking of crickets. It’s getting late. I’m heading out. You want me to bring you back something? Chipmunk or baby robin, maybe?
Dog: Nah, man. Thanks. But if you think of it, when you get back in the morning, urp up something on Numb Nuts’ bed like you did last time. That was tasty.
Cat: I’ll see what I can do. Later, Man.
Dog: Later.
Anyway, I returned to my work and finished out the day a little more excited about the world.
–Sue Lange, author WE, ROBOTS
Lange Unfocused 