Bless the Beagle

Whenever I think of rabbits, I think of Realph. He was a little tricolor beagle named after my great-grandfather--a lean, rugged, son of Norway who came to central Wisconsin in the 1880s and homesteaded 160 hardscrabble acres. Great-Grandpa made something out of nothing from that chunk of unforgiving real estate. Realph the beagle could do the same with a bunny track.

My cousin Scott held title to Realph and kept him fed, but no one owned him except the cottontails living on the ground once owned by his namesake. Great-Grandpa had somehow farmed the land, but that place was really meant to grow trees and deer and grouse and, of course, bunnies. Realph the beagle knew this--about the rabbits anyway--and spent the better part of his life pointing it out to my cousins and me every winter.

Anyone who's ever owned a great hunting dog knows they are infinitely smarter than the folks who run them, and Realph was something of a genius. He divided his life into three tidy compartments: eating, sleeping and chasing rabbits.

We started rabbit hunting as soon after the deer season as Realph would allow. Like most Wisconsin men, we took our whitetail hunting seriously, and also like our ancestors we abhorred waste, viewing an empty buck tag as an abomination. So we sat through the cold and we slogged through swamps, and we never gave up until we had "filled out." I know we loved deer hunting, but some days I remember not smiling very much.

As we went about our deer business, Realph waited patiently, groaning through pleasant dreams while curled in a little ball at one end of his couch. I never figured out how he knew when we had our deer, but he always did.

One day we'd come in from the woods and collapse on Realph's couch, hoping to join in his slumber. But Realph was no longer sleeping. Instead, he'd whine impatiently and nudge our hands and even our chins with his nose. Trying to nap next to a beagle that's ready to hunt is as hopeless as sleeping through a baby's feeding time.

It seemed there was always snow on the ground then. Goaded by the little beagle, we'd remove a layer or two of clothing, don lighter boots and strap holsters holding little .22 Ruger pistols on our hips. Then we'd turn Realph--who'd morphed from a snoozing ball into a wriggling contortionist--loose from Scott's porch. He was bawling on a track within minutes.

Something wonderful always happened to us immediately after Realph announced the first rabbit. I remember laughing out loud a lot, a sort of involuntary chuckle that would escape me without thought.

When I was a teenager, I painted houses for a man who was a nut about bluegrass music, which we'd listen to on his tape player all day long. George maintained that you couldn't hear banjo music and not get in a good mood. He was right, and I came to believe the same thing about beagles. If that baying doesn't spread warmth in your chest, you have to be dead inside.

Of course we were all young and tough and prided ourselves on being good hunters and even better shots. But we could, and did, miss rabbits with regularity and did not take our failure personally.

I think that was Realph's doing, too. Whenever I shot a bunny he'd been trailing, I felt like I'd taken a toy away from a toddler. He'd run up to the rabbit and give a little yip--like he'd caught the thing napping and wanted to get the chase going again--until he realized what I'd done. Then Realph would look up at me, shake his head, stare off in the woods and sigh audibly. Killing cottontails with a pistol was difficult for me, but somehow I always felt like I should apologize to that dog whenever I got lucky.