Bert

For the woman, it was an instant match. The man was less sure.

“He’s a little weird-looking…”

“I know! It’s adorable!”

“What kind of dog did you say he was again?”

“Not a dog,” the woman who ran the shelter said, “an Andrewsarchus. Like a cross between a warthog and a wolf, with a little bit of whale thrown in for good measure. I should warn you they grow up pretty fast. Are you sure you have the space for him?”

“Yes, I think we do. Big backyard, lots of space to run around.”

“Honey, you’re sure this is the one you want?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right… What should we call him?”

The animal let out a little belch. Brrrrt.

“I think he just decided!”

And so they took Bert home.

***

It was difficult at first, figuring out what he should eat, where he should sleep. They found that he was very fond of fish (must be the whale in him), but chicken and pork were fine too. When he was small, they would feed him a can of tuna or chicken breast mixed with rice twice a day, but as he grew he began to need more and more food. Soon they were going to the market and buying a dozen whole haddock and a few frozen turkeys every week.

“Bert is getting to be a little more expensive than I would have guessed,” said the man.

“Yes, but isn’t such a sweetie?”

“He is that.”

They began to take him to the beach late in the evenings, when hardly anyone was around. That way he could fish to his heart’s content.

Bert started out sleeping with them at the foot of their bed, but pretty soon he had to move to the floor. He would wake them up mornings by licking their faces, although his pungent, fishy breath alone could often do the job. Eventually, though, he was so big he could hardly fit through the bedroom door. They moved the cars to the driveway and set him up with a bed of his own in the garage.

The backyard had always been fenced, but as he grew it quickly became clear that the four-foot aluminum structure that they’d had would not be enough. After a year Bert was near ten feet long and weighed close to 800 pounds. The yard was long enough that he could get up a pretty good momentum. The dinky little fence wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Honey, have you seen the quote the contractor gave us? I don’t know how we can afford to build a wall high enough to keep Bert in! And besides, I’m not sure we’d ever get it approved by the HOA.”

“Well we can’t just have him running loose, can we?”

“No, I guess not.” But the man did have some other ideas about how they could deal with Bert.

***

The wall was built, and life went on.

Bert was a very friendly, gregarious creature. When they were out on walks it was difficult to keep him from bounding over and greeting every dog that they came across (they’d given up on leashes a long time ago). The dogs, naturally, were inclined to be shy as Bert’s enormous lumbering form came close for a sniff. They never tried to reciprocate Bert’s playfulness.

There were times, though, that Bert could be a little rough. Sometimes the neighbors’ cat would sneak in under the gate to pay Bert a visit. Usually these visits were nothing but amicable, but every so often the cat would get frisky and bop Bert on the snout. Bert didn’t like being bopped on the snout. He would start to rumble with his low guttural growl and he’d have to be scolded to play nice. But sometimes the cat would just bop him again, and Bert would roar and snap his jaws and it would be a scramble for the man or the woman to whisk the cat to safety in time.

Bert could also exhibit some selective hearing when it came to commands. Out on walks, sometimes he would get a whiff of a mule deer off to the side of the road. His head would shoot up, his ears flick forward, and in an instant he’d be off and running. Of course they would shout at him to come back, to leave the deer alone, to play nice. But he’d just keep going, loping into the woods until they chased him down. They didn’t think that he meant the deer any harm, and besides the deer were always faster than him anyway.

***

When Bert was four years old, the family got some exciting news. They were going to have a baby! Naturally everyone was thrilled, and there was a big party to celebrate. Bert liked having all of those people in his yard, and there were plenty of scraps for him to gobble up.

“Isn’t it cute? He’s so great with people!”

“Yes,” the man said. But in his head there were other thoughts: ‘Yes, with full-grown people. But what will it be like when there’s a little baby running around the yard with him?’

Many preparations had to be made. The spare bedroom that they had been using as a study had to be converted into something more suitable for the baby. They bought a crib and a changing table and a baby gate and all kinds of child-proofing equipment for the doorknobs and the outlets and all the sharp corners in the house.

They decided together that Bert and the baby wouldn’t be in the yard at the same time. Not until they were used to each other.

***

One night a few weeks after the big party, they called Bert into the garage so he could go to bed. They didn’t like leaving the garage door open all night, and they didn’t want to leave him outside in case it rained.

When Bert got to the door he was chewing something. They told him to drop it but he got an embarrassed expression on his face and kept chewing. They insisted, and eventually he spit it out, a bleeding heap of ruined flesh. The woman blanched and the man retched.

“Go inside, I’ll handle this,” the man said. The woman went into the house.

The man went in for a closer look. Among the raw chewed meat there were many tufts of fur and broken bits of bone. But there was one other thing that really caught his eye. A collar with a bell and a little tag. This was the neighbors’ cat.

“Bad boy, Bert! Bad!” the man shouted. Bert started his low rumbling growl, hunching his head low like he might be about to charge. The man ran for the house and closed the garage door. He could still hear Bert grumbling on the other side of the door for a few minutes before he went quiet and transitioned to snoring.

Inside, a discussion was had.

“We can’t keep him.”

“What do you mean? This is the one time --”

“No, it’s not. We’ve had to save that cat before. This time we weren’t around and look what happened.”

“But they were such good friends!”

“Yes, but apparently that didn’t mean too much to him.”

“I guess not. But still, this is the only time he’s ever done anything like this. He’s such a sweet boy!”

“The only time that we know of. And the next time it might not be a deer or a cat. It might be you, or me, or the baby. We can’t keep him.”

“...”

“...”

“You’re right.”

***

Animal Control officers came that weekend. In the morning, before they let Bert out for the day, the garage was pumped full of gas to knock him out. He was restrained, loaded into a truck, and taken off to a zoo a few hours away. It was a sad day, but they were happy to know that they could still visit him from time to time.

They made monthly trips up to the zoo to see Bert. He was happy in his enclosure. There was a big pond for him to wallow in and plenty of fish and meat to eat every day. He was always happy to see them, because it was lonely at the zoo.

The baby was born a few months later, and the visits to the zoo became less frequent. They were busy now with child rearing, but they still made the trip when they could.

The baby grew up and wasn’t a baby anymore. She grew into a little girl. She liked to look at all the animals in the zoo, but Bert the Andrewsarchus was always her favorite.

But on one visit when the little girl was four years old, the family got some sad news. Bert had been sent to Mongolia, where he would become part of an effort to reintroduce the species into the wild. The family was happy that Bert could make new friends and maybe even start a family of his own, but they were sad, too, that they wouldn’t be able to see their friend again. Even the man.