I am walking my new golden retriever puppy, Teddy, on Cundy’s Harbor Road. It is Teddy’s first walk, and as he bounds along, I struggle not to get bound up by his leash.
While Teddy keeps his snout to the ground, sniffing out what happened and may possibly happen in his and my future, up ahead I see a small, fuzzy object lurching in the middle of the road like a toy top that has just been spun. It is a mole, blindly groping its way along.
***
When I first brought Teddy home, I did not bring him into the house to meet my Lab, Echo. Instead, I placed the 8-week-old pup near a flower bed in my backyard and gave him a chance to explore his new surroundings.
He decided to check out a weedy part of the lawn that slopes down into the forest. Soon he was out of sight, camouflaged by tall wildflowers, and I could only see him by paying attention to the swaying of the stalks his chubby puppy body bumped into.
“Come back, Teddy,” I said, knowing full well he had no idea his name was Teddy. To my surprise, he bounded back onto the lawn, but now with a new anatomical appendage. Hanging from Teddy’s mouth was a long, pink tail.
This time it was my turn to do some bounding, and I bounded over to Teddy.
“Drop it, Teddy!” I said firmly.
Teddy gave me a quizzical look. He must have misheard me and thought I had said, “Eat it, Teddy!” because before I could grab the tail and pull the other end free, Teddy swallowed the mouse.
I held my breath. Could he swallow a whole mouse without choking on it? Would I have to perform the Heimlich maneuver? To these wordless questions, Teddy wagged his own tail, roamed around some more and found a small stick to chew on.
***
I pull Teddy to a stop and hope he will not see the mole, who is now just yards away from us and still spinning, still deciding which way it wants to go. Alas, the mole decides to head directly toward us. It is then that I become an observer of a historical reenactment of the Titanic sailing toward an iceberg.
It is easy to play the part of an iceberg. When Teddy sees the miniature Titanic and realizes that, on its present course, it will ram into him, he lays down on the side of the road and waits. Instead of a collision, his revisionist account will say the Titanic entered a slobbery harbor and ended up in his stomach.
I watch the slow-moving drama unfold and consider different ethical, philosophical and biological propositions: the survival of the fittest, the Sermon on the Mount, whether there is such a thing as free will, and finally utilitarianism — the belief that the best decision is the one that will make the most people (and moles) happy.
All of these musings persuade me that the right thing to do is to pull the iceberg to the other side of the road and allow the Titanic a chance to dock in some other port.
I do not know whether the mole eventually arrived home or suffered a different sort of catastrophe. What I do know is that, for the rest of my walk, I recalled Victor Frankenstein’s words after creating the monster: “I now know what it feels like to be God!”
This feeling did not last long and was eventually replaced with a different observation. Maybe like the mole, I am blind about what I am walking into as my future unfolds. Maybe Teddy and I are just a good example of the blind leading the blind — and each day we rely on some divine power to divert our path from a silent iceberg that lies dead ahead.
I then mouth the words, “Lower the lifeboats.” It’s always good to know what to say in a crisis.
