Wild Dogs vs. Firecracker

My friend Eric and I were walking down the middle of a deserted two-lane road in the middle of nowhere, Georgia at three a.m. I was a college student; he was in high school. Our car had broken down, and there were no cell phones back then. So we walked, hoping to find a phone to call AAA. To amuse himself Eric was tossing firecrackers in the road.

After about a half hour of walking, we heard dogs barking. Not the yip-yip of little chihuahuas, but low, reverberating doberman-size barks and angry growling. “I sure hope there’s a fence between them and us,” I said. Suddenly I could see in the light of a street light ahead the silhouettes of several large dogs coming towards us at a full run. There was no fence.

“Oh shit,” Eric said. We didn’t need to re-survey the area: no hiding places, no shelter.

I’m aware of the cliché of one’s life flashing before one’s eyes. What I saw was my death. Massive blood loss from the neck and groin would be the coroner’s determination. (Eric later confirmed that he was similarly distracted.) Fortunately the self-preserving part of my brain interrupted.

“Eric, your firecrackers!!”

He frantically pulled a firecracker from one of his pockets and fumbled to get his lighter from another. He lit it on the first try and tossed it towards the approaching dogs. It exploded right in front of the lead dog’s face. They all did an instant 180-degree turn, and the loud barks and growls turned to equally loud whimpering. Within a few seconds they were gone.

Eric and I almost instantly fell into hysterics. I guess the fact that the turn from danger to comedy was so abrupt combined with the surreal feeling of the whole situation to make it incredibly funny. After rolling on the road for about five minutes we started walking again, but we occasionally burst into laughter until we got home (via AAA tow truck). I continued to have a strange “did that really happen?” kind of feeling for several days.