The Chicken Wire
Sanction
by Jean d'Isle
 orty-five minutes by British Rail, north of Central
London, is the small village of Stoke Poges. Though not
generally known to the average tourist, it was here that
Thomas Gray penned his "Elegy in a Country
Churchyard." Not far from that historic churchyard
is a manor house and surrounding cottages once comprising
the Moorehouse estate. The cottages have long since been
sold off as quaint country homes, and the once elegant
manor house turned into a workman's social club.
During a tour of duty in England,  we lived in a house
facing the high brick wall surrounding the the manor
grounds. "The Cottage", as it was called (our
official postal address was "The Cottage, Stoke
Poges", was said to date from the 1700's. Originally
just a one room dwelling, in Victorian times a
three-story structure was added to the front—six
huge box-like rooms—and the original cottage became
a roomy kitchen. It had a substantial garden (that's
yard, in Brit), enclosed by a seven-foot high fence of
interwoven horizontal planks. It seemed to be ideal for
containing a dog, with lots of room to wander and
explore.
Pooker, the Andalucian cockerpoo,  had served his time in
the British Quarantine facility and came to join us in
The Cottage. It became apparent very quickly that he
considered that seven-foot fence a minor impediment
between him and the exploration of the environs of Stoke
Poges.
His first escape was baffling. We put
him out to romp in his huge domain and he disappeared
within minutes.
Following a close inspection of the fence for open
gates or holes (nothing), I tracked him to a nearby field
where he was receiving a short lesson in why not to mess
with horses. A rather bored mare tired of his yapping and
sent him tumbling with a well-aimed kick.
The misadventure with the horse was not
a deterrent to Pooker's desire to find out what was
beyond that fence. At the next opportunity he was gone
again. This time
he disappeared for several hours, eventually returning
with a tired but satisfied look on his face. I was
determined to find his escape route from the yard and
seal it off; so the next time I let him out of the house,
I cleverly took up a strategic location where I had him
under constant surveillance. He behaved as if he had no
interest whatsoever in leaving the yard—lots of
sniffing and wandering about. When he finally lay down
near the back door with a deceptive yawn, I took a break
from the surveillance. Zip...he was gone. This time we
had to retrieve him from the Maidenhead jail several
miles away, where he had been deposited by a concerned
citizen who found him meandering along one of the busier
nearby streets.
Having been outsmarted on all my
previous attempts to find his point of egress, I decided
to station myself outside the yard where I could observe
the entire fence line, then have my wife let the beast
into the yard.
It worked. Along one stretch of the fence
I spotted a black furry head emerging, followed by a leg,
a fat little body and a stubby tail. He had discovered
that midway between the posts the horizontal planks were
flexible enough to wedge a determined body through. At
last I had him. I went out the same day and procured
sufficient chicken wire to seal off the flexible area
between the two bottom boards along the entire length of
the fence. Gleeful, after having finally outwitted this
wretched animal who had confounded me for so long, I left
him alone in the yard to ponder the consequences of
matching wits with his master. He, of course, disappeared
immediately. He just moved up one level on the fence.
And so it went over the next few
months, the contest between man and beast literally
escalated. As I sealed off one level of this seven-foot
high barrier, Pooker moved up to the next. I was spending
a small fortune on chicken wire. I guess I was hoping
that eventually the height would discourage him before
all of my disposable income had gone into chicken wire.
The chicken wire had reached almost to eye level when the
contest of wills and wits finally ended. A pleasant
English matron appeared at the door one day to inquire
about a dog that seemed to be protruding from our fence.
She was walking by when she came eyeball to eyeball with
Pooker, who had worked his way up to the escape level,
which now stood at about five feet above the ground, but
had apparently gained too much weight to get more that a
head and a leg through the fence. From that day, Pooker
abandoned his escape attempts, I suspect more out of
embarrassment than anything else.
I am amazed to this day that he was
able to wander around the streets and countryside of
Stoke Poges without coming to an unfortunate end. But he
was a clever beast, and I've still got the chicken wire
invoices to prove it.
__________________________________________________
Jean d'Isle
is a retired naval officer living in Hawaii. During his military career he
served in a number of overseas assignments, including
Germany, England, Spain, Viet Nam and Puerto Rico.
Following his retirement, he was an adjunct faculty
member of Hawaii Pacific University and is currently
under contract with the U.S. Navy at the submarine base
in Pearl Harbor.
Jean's column, View From
d'Isle, is a regular feature of VegSource On-Line
Magazine.
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