An innocent mistake
And three died. Plus a poll on Murat, the Turkish internet sensation, and an impressive bull elk.
TALES FROM THE CLINIC
Dog Bite
By Barbara Ramsey
WHEN RON ENTERED my exam room, I couldn’t know that his visit would lead to the deaths of three people. He wasn’t a regular patient of mine at Native American Health Center. I had seen him at a variety of Indian community events around the San Francisco Bay Area. He was a tall, amiable guy with long dark braids and a ready smile. But that day, he was agitated.
Ron worked at Native American agency in San Francisco that helped people find jobs and housing. He was was often asked to carry work documents to both sides of the bay. Ron liked driving and getting out of the office, so he didn’t mind. That day he’d been tasked with getting a signature from an agency employee who lived in East Oakland and had been home with a bad cold. Ron headed out thinking it would be a simple afternoon drive, early enough to avoid rush hour traffic.
But Ron was given the incorrect address, two-digits transposed by accident. It was this simple mistake that ended in tragedy. He went to the wrong house, a slightly funky one-story bungalow. Ron strolled up the front walk and knocked at the screen door. “Hello, anybody home?”
Glancing inside, he could see an older man in a wheelchair watching TV at the other end of the living room. He knew his co-worker’s dad used a wheelchair, so he felt sure he was at the right place. “Hello, is Leo here?” he asked, more loudly this time. Still no response.
The screen door was unlatched, so Ron stepped inside to get the man’s attention. That was a mistake. A big pit bull came out of nowhere and lunged at Ron, sinking his teeth into one hand. Ron managed to yank his hand from the dog’s mouth, step back onto the porch, and shut the screen door. Breathless and bleeding, he looked up to see a medium-sized Latino guy with multiple tattoos and a growl of his own.
“Who the fuck are you? Whaddya doin coming into my house?” The man glared, the pit bull at his side.
“Isn’t this Leo Archway’s house? I came to give Leo some papers.”
“There’s no fucking Leo here so get the hell off my property and don’t ever come back.” The man slammed the door.
Ron retreated to his car, wrapped his bloodied hand in an old towel, and headed to our clinic, just a few blocks away. As I unwrapped his hand, he told me what had happened. There were several shallow puncture wounds and some adjacent lacerations, but nothing too worrisome. The bleeding had stopped, so he didn’t need stitches. I cleaned the wounds, bandaged his hand, prescribed some antibiotics, and then explained the most important part.
“You need to call animal control,” I said and gave him their number. “That dog has to be checked out for rabies. The antibiotics won’t kill the rabies virus.” California has a fair amount of rabies, mainly in wild animals. But Ron’s attack seemed unprovoked—the modus operandi of a rabid animal.
“I am not going back to that guy’s house ever again!” Ron said.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “That’s animal control’s job. But first they need to take a report from you. It can wait til tomorrow morning if you want, but no later. Rabies is the only infectious disease I know of that’s one hundred percent fatal if untreated.”
“OK, I will,” he said. We arranged for him to come back in three days’ time to re-check his wounds and find out how the rabies investigation was going. That investigation would turn out badly, although neither of us could have possibly anticipated just how badly.
Two nights later as I was headed to bed, I passed my husband in the living room and overheard a TV news announcer: “More on today’s tragedy here in East Oakland.” Our clinic was in East Oakland, so I paused. “Earlier this afternoon, police were called to check on a possible rabid dog at this East Oakland residence.” The video cut to yellow police tape around a porch. “The house was the residence of Eduardo Rodriguez, an alleged drug dealer who owned a pit bull.” I sank down on the couch, stricken.
Rodriguez had run the animal control people off the property the day before. They called the cops. And when Rodriguez saw two uniformed officers coming up the walk, he started shooting. The policeman in front had his gun holstered when he was shot. The cop behind him drew his gun and returned fire, then retreated to his car to call for backup. In the ensuing battle, three people died—the first cop, Rodriguez, and his father, still in his wheelchair. The dog was caught in the crossfire.
The next day, I saw that Ron was scheduled for an afternoon appointment. I wondered if he would show up. What could be going through his head and heart? I also felt oddly connected to him as a distant player in the tragedy. I’d done everything by the book. But if I’d omitted instructing Ron to notify animal control, those three people might still be alive. I was suddenly struck by how impersonal causality can be, and how impervious to our own sense of guilt or innocence.
Ron came to the clinic at the appointed hour. In the exam room, I found all six foot four inches of him huddled in a small chair. The fear and pain I’d seen three days earlier were replaced by a distant, mournful look. I removed the bandage to examine his hand, which was healing. There was no evidence of infection. Physically he was fine.
But he told me he’d been going over and over the events. Should he have double checked the address? What if he’d just stayed on the porch and simply shouted more loudly? Could signing the contract have waited another few days until his co-worker recovered?
I tried to be reassuring. “It’s not your fault, Ron. You were just an innocent by-stander in all this. You didn’t do anything wrong.” I kept talking, but I don’t think either of us heard a word I said.
PICTURE & WORDS
MY FRIEND BRIAN and I spent the past week traveling the West, from Rocky Mountain National Park to the (smoke-filled) Grand Tetons and finally to Yellowstone, where we spent two happy days taking photographs. This bull elk is the alpha male in a herd we discovered, along with a large group of visitors, at Mammoth Hot Springs in the northwest corner of the park. It is rutting season, a time when males compete by banging heads and issuing loud calls, known as bugling. There were several other bull elks, but all of them suddenly found grass to chew on elsewhere. The visitors were less willing to back off, despite the presence of two rangers with bull horns doing crowd control. “You, in the orange shirt, get back in your car. Orange shirt! Back in your car.”
On our side of the road a network of wooden walkways surrounded a small mountain composed of minerals deposited from the hot springs bubbling at the top. The entire herd moseyed from the other side of the road to ours. The alpha bull was last to go, rounding up stragglers before starting across, past a line of cars. Passengers huddled inside, taking pictures with their phones as the giant animal passed. Moving slowly, the alpha bull finally planted himself on the edge of the herd and let out a series of loud bugles. Brian and I stood on a nearby walkway with a dozen others. The ranger edged us back again and again, away from the alpha bull who, he said, could easily jump the rail between us. Like the other male elks, we obeyed.
P.S. I can’t leave this story without reporting an earlier elk encounter. Years ago, we went to Point Reyes to watch the elk rut with our friends Dave and Deirdre. We had no problem finding a herd, with two bulls facing off. From a reasonable distance, we watched for the action to begin. We waited patiently for almost an hour, until the evening sun started to fade. Disappointed, we finally gave up and headed for our car. As we walked away, Dave said, “Yep. No use crying over stilled elk.”
READER REACTION
Doubling down on Murat
By Barbara Ramsey
Editor’s Note: This is a commentary on a previous post.
MY STORY ABOUT the Turkish nut seller, Murat Erdem, elicited an intense response. Now, I too have strong feelings about Murat. But I was still surprised, especially by the negative reactions. “Oh, ick!” said one friend, “That guy is awful!”
“Such a disturbing person,” said another, “It weirds me out to watch his videos.”
This astonishes me! Murat’s typical video lasts less than a minute and shows him standing in the aisle at his nut store, lip syncing to old Turkish pop music while looking into the camera and occasionally winking at his viewers. He’s always smiling and often seems downright joyous. As a different friend said last week, “Murat radiates pure happiness! I just love him!”
So what’s the deal? Clearly many people hate how he looks. Although he’s a young man of forty, he dresses like his beloved Turkish pop stars of the 1970’s and 80’s. Murat might bring back painful memories If you had a bad experience at a disco in 1978.
Some find his aura of sexual ambiguity disturbing. He can come across as a gay guy looking for love, telegraphing either campy charm or vague menace. Others see him as a rampaging heterosexual love god. Their comments can be summarized as “Men! Lock up your wives!” or “Habibi, please leave some women for us.”
What many viewers see as an enormous reservoir of charisma, others perceive as slightly predatory. He reminds one of my sisters of the guys who goosed her at the pizzeria where she worked as a college student. Their charisma was entirely in their own minds, like Steve Martin’s wild-and-crazy guy. If your charisma exists only inside your skull, you may be a creep.
A creep is someone who wants something from you, usually sex or money. Most women have dealt with sexual creeps. Every used car buyer has encountered the monetary version. So here’s the crux of the matter: Does Murat want anything from his viewers?
I say, no! Murat wants nothing from me. He’s not a leering, wannabe porn star who craves attention, but someone who merely wants to share his love of vintage clothes and sappy Turkish tunes. I admire him with humor and irony and appreciate his weirdness in a world of sameness. He makes me smile.
How about you?
I love this post - as I do all of your posts.
As a person who has lived with and loved two pit bulls I feel compelled, though, to object to the graphic of a dog that already gets a bad rap thanks to owners who take advantage of their tendency to want to please their humans. In the wrong hands, any dog can be vicious.
Back in the early 1900's, pit bulls were considered "nanny" dogs because of their tendency to protect children. Petey on the Little Rascals was a pit bull and families were crazy about the breed.
If you want to know what a dog is like, look at the owner. The pit bull in your story was clearly a product of the people who owned it. A better graphic would have been of a tough guy abusing his dog.
Ron was lucky he walked away with his own life in that first encounter. The guilt and confusion must have been overwhelming. I'm not sure we have learned enough about survivor's guilt even now. I hope he was able to move past.