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Originally posted spring 2006 as Billy, Jaeger, and the cornbread.

My first day as a Refugee.

After hurriedly leaving the city on Tuesday night I wound up at a friends house in Cold Water, MS. With us were three dogs two that belonged to a friend ( red bean and jagermeister ) and my dog Libra. I am not really sure that Libra is a dog I think she is some reincarnated human being. Jager is a 7 month old Lab quite the puppy yet very large. We got the dogs settled in the fenced in backyard except for Libra who had house privileges.

The escape of Jaeger

Jager is an escape artist and he does not like to be confined to yards he managed to open the latched gate and was running all over the neighborhood in Cold Water. As I chased the dog through back yards down streets through alleys I had to rest, the dog is in a lot better shape than I am. I later found out that the dog and I were lucky that we did not get shot for trespassing. As I caught my breath one of the good citizens of Cold Water was on his porch in his pajamas retrieving his paper. He yelled “he went that way and pointed in the direction that Jager had gone. “hold on I’ll get my truck and we can chase ‘er down.” I get in the truck driven by a man dressed in his pajamas, a perfect stranger.

We pull up on Jaeger I jump out of the truck, rats gone again he takes off across a field, “get in the truck we can head him off on the other side of the field” I jumped back in the truck and we chased the dog down again but every time I tried to capture the elusive Jager he took off again. It got to the point where the dog recognized the truck and would run before I could even get out. After 45 minutes of this I was exhausted and discouraged, I wondered how I was going to tell my friend that I lost her dog in Cold Water Ms. My new friend said the dog should be OK there is not a lot of traffic in Cold Water he should come back when he gets hungry.

Jaeger, Billy, and the cornbread

I went back to my friends house and told him the story he thought it was funny he knew the man who had helped me chase the dog ( his name escapes me). I figured the dog will get hungry and come home. About an hour later my good Samaritan friend knocks on the door and says “we found the dog, Billy is feeding it cornbread from his hand, I went down the street and saw a man sitting in his side yard feeding Jager cornbread, Jaeger would take a bite and try to grab Jaeger. That dog was too fast for all of us that day. Jaeger would come back for more, when Billy tried to grab him he would back off again. I gave up, I took a stick and threw it to the back of Billy’s yard, Jaeger fetched the stick and brought it back to me. I tackled him and quickly got him on the leash , I thought that was too easy. They neighbors said they had not had that much excitement in the neighborhood in quite some time.

After securing Jaeger in the yard I went inside and watched CNN the news was breaking my heart. Jaeger had done me a big favor that morning, for a couple of hours I was able to forget the news, as Jaeger made his presence known in Cold Water. Small town America is certainly different from my home in New Orleans.

Many thanks to Dee, Sheri, Gene, and Carlton for putting us up in our time of need. Thanks also to all of the kind people in Cold water who were so kind and helpful to us.