wild mountain gorilla ( Archived) (12)

Awesome!! You'd never catch me trying to film something like that though.

Diane Fosse lived with them and David Attenborough has also had close encounters too.

Wonderful creatures and gentle giants.

Awesome Stringman! When I worked in Cable Television, I had the same experiences with dogs. I learned to stay still with a mean one and talked to them like a child.

This is a chapter from my Diary:

Cable Television and Man’s Best Friend:

I love dogs, and my co-workers did too. It seemed that most of our customers had one or more. Dealing with canines became a specialty for us. Not all dogs are friendly and some are cautious to protect their territories…they can attack viscously.

We always carried dog biscuits in our pockets. The precaution wasn’t necessary most of the time because most canines are friendly. Usually just a sniff of a hand or a pat on the head by us was enough. Most canines have the intelligence of about a two year old human child. Talking to them with a pleasant voice and kind mannerisms will make them your friend.

I loved the way that they would turn their heads and smile.
However, there are exceptions. The smaller and the nervous ones, like poodles, are sneaky. We called them “heal nippers”. They would attack us when we weren’t looking and bite, and then they would run away. This was the only time that I was ever bitten.

My most memorable experience with a large dog was a neighbor of a customer’s pit bull that jumped a fence and ran at me with teeth bared. He started running circles around me…getting closer and closer. I did what any red-blooded human being would do…I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran. Apparently that was the right thing to do because the dog became confused and jumped back over the fence to his friendly confines.

Some of my co-workers weren’t so lucky.

1) Joe was on a call to make a cable upgrade for a customer. The telephone pole was in what we called an “easement”, located on adjoining property lines in back yards. This was not a good thing because the poles were difficult to get at… because of adjoining backyard property fences.

Protocol was to contact or leave a note for the neighbor whose yard that entry was required; to get to the telephone pole safely. Joe did this, but the person was not a cable customer:

She granted permission for Joe to enter her fenced yard. As Joe was proceeding to the telephone pole, the woman let her German Sheppard dog on him to attack. The dog knocked him down and went for his neck. Joe was very large and strong. He was able to grab the dog by the neck while on his back, on the ground. The woman laughed and approached the dog and Joe.

Joe asked her “can you control this dog”? The woman continued to laugh. He had to snap the dog’s neck. Charges were filed against the woman for “use of a deadly weapon”. She went to prison for years.

2) Dan was doing an install for a new customer. She had one of those heels –nipping poodles. To service or install cable television in the 1980’s, the converter box was always in back of the television, on the floor. We would always have to reach with our derrieres exposed.

The customer was in the kitchen. As Dan was doing his work, the dog snuck up and bit him you know where. Dan is the most non-violent man that I have ever met… but it must have hurt because he kicked the poodle very hard and snapped the poor dog’s neck.

Dan came to me for consultation before going to our boss to explain.

I asked him “but what happened to the dog”? He said “I looked both ways and pushed it under the couch”. I advised him to say nothing and to this day, nothing ever happened.