I was in the Abacos one Sunday afternoon and a good friend Bill Germany was watching football at the Jib Room in March Harbor and he was getting pretty drunk. I asked him what was going on and he explained that his wife had flown back to Corpus Christi for a board meeting and he had ONE job while she was gone, to feed and take care of Bubba. Let me explain that Bubba was a hundred-pound slobbering bulldog. He was loveable, but in a very wet kind of way.
I also liked Bill, he was a very funny stockbroker from Corpus Christi, Texas who once confided to me that he had accidently bankrupted a doctor there and he didn’t know that it was possible. I always had the feeling that Bill had married way above his station, and that was what enabled him to retire and go sailing.
“So what’s the problem Bill.” I asked. He explained that yesterday he was pretty sure Bubba ate some of the fresh rat poison that had been put outside the Jib Room. All day Bubba drug his back feet and was very lethargic. So, there is no vet in Marsh Harbor, so he took him to the only doctor on the island. The Doc had prescribed some medicine, but Bubba was dead when Bill woke up the next morning.
We both finished watching the football game and got drunk. At the end of the game I decided to help Bill bury Bubba, no easy task on a coral island, and I had been worrying about it the whole time we were drinking. We went back to Bill’s boat and Bubba was lying dead on the couch. I proceeded to pick him up, but noticed Bubba was still warm. “Bill how much medicine did you give Bubba?” I said.
“All of it, you know that doc on the island is a quack and doesn’t know anything.” said Bill.
“Bill Bubba is not dead, you over-dosed him.” I shot back.
Well the next idea was to get Bubba into a very small boat shower. Two drunks should not attempt this, and we failed. We had several other ideas that failed too. The final idea was to get Bubba on the dock, feed him some coffee and try to move his legs in walking “manor”. This was hard work and required that one or both of us stop for a drink occasionally.
After about an hour we got Bubba to sit up and slobber on his own, so we decided to take Bubba to the Jib Room, see the second football game of the day and have a drink.
Everyone was so excited to see Bubba sit up and he lick everyone four to five times. No one minded his licking — he was alive. We were in a true celebratory mood and many rounds were bought for the house.
About an hour into this “rising from the dead celebration” in walked BobJoe (one of the local fishermen) and he said, “Boy am I glad to see Bubba’s doing ok, I saw his back foot get run over by a motor scooter yesterday.”