Sending dogs deaf.
Its the mid-eighties, and Playstations are still a twinkle in a Sony engineer's eye. Thus, we had nothing to do, and no money to do it. So an evenings entertainment would be to go up the local council tip located deep in a wood on a country park,and with matches nicked from our parents, set fire to the accumulated council rubbish.

Occasionally, you'd find some aerosol cans that we'd delight in exploding, or some weird pots of solvent that would burn funny colours and make you feel pleasantly scoobied should you get too close. However, one otherwise unpromising Sunday afternoon, we discovered a great, great thing. A huge fridge,its white body crying out for a pyre to be built beneath it. Which we promptly did, lit, and retired to a mound high above it where we could safely observe the inferno.

It quickly started making weird whistling noises, and seemed to vibrate on the flaming branches below it. We were ecstatic, but then terrified as a man, walking a tiny shaggy mongrel, came walking out of the woods close to the tip.

He seemed to be non-plussed, and carried on walking, but the dog lingered, curiously sniffing at the flames. We tried to throw sticks at it to scare it off, but they fell short, and just as it seemed to be contemplating moving on, there was a huge explosion, a blue fireball ten feet high, and the fridge door blown at an acute angle into the forest. The shock wave was enough to make me nearly lose bowel control, so that poor dog must have been hit hard. Still, it ran off alive, albeit looking terrified and yapping manically.

We thought little of it until the following Thursday, where the local free paper had as its headlines 'PARK ARSONISTS DEAFEN DOG', followed by the heart rendering tale of how 12 year old cross-breed Sammy had been permantly rendered deaf by evil teenage arsonists.

Thankfully, a friend bought an Atari ST, and my energies were diverted from canine-maiming arson to more sedate, sedantary pass-times. Still feel terrible, though.
(trumplefahrt, Mon 11 Oct 2010, 14:48, Reply)