The Feral Librarian

The Feral Librarian

She sits,
tongue hanging out,
shreds of cloth from devoured patrons stuck between her teeth;
the patrons who used books as hot pads,
who turned down the corners of pages to mark their place.

Her eyes dilated,
search the room for the next victim.
Her nose twitches sniffing the air;
smelling for fear,
misshelved books,
the scent of those who dunk their books in coffee,
or use them as spaghetti plates.

She’s on the hunt.
Beware.

by Priscilla Berggren-Thomas


Ben and I were playing fetch at the library this morning. Actually, I was crawling around on the floor trying to convince him to run after the toy I’d just thrown, while he was trying to chew on my hand, as he was sure that made a much better chew toy. Ben is my Golden Retriever puppy, one in a long line of dogs who have shared my life and kept me sane. It’s true that most days I prefer dogs to people, especially at the end of the day when I need someone to lick my wounds and make me smile.

Prior to becoming a librarian, I actually attended seminary. It’s tough being a dog lover in seminary, where you are supposed to be dedicated to loving humanity. All those soon-to-be pastors looked askance when I let it slip that I really preferred dogs to people. But a dog’s mind makes so much more sense to me than a human’s does. And there’s a good reason for that. You see, I was raised by wolves. Well, maybe not wolves exactly, but an assortment of dogs; mutts, Golden Retrievers, Irish Setters, Newfoundlands, Great Pyrenees, even a Border Collie. They taught me about being part of a pack and how to keep all the human angst in perspective. They are also probably the reason I’m a librarian and not a pastor. A feral librarian maybe, but a librarian none the less.

I’ve learned a lot from dogs. Like Finn, my first Golden, taught me about the importance of sticking with your friends. He was eight weeks old at the time and we were driving across Wyoming. Both Finn and I had to go, but Bruce was behind the wheel and kept putting off stopping. That’s when Finn crawled on top of Bruce and peed on him. I’d been married to that man for five years by then and hadn’t managed to get him to stop the car when I wanted to stop. Finn in a matter of minutes worked a miracle, because even if Bruce could ignore me, he could no longer ignore the dog.

Finn also taught me about perseverance. He loved refried beans, and if I wouldn’t feed them to him, he’d just help himself. It didn’t matter if the can was unopened. He could pick out which can had refried beans in it. He’d get it down, puncture hundreds of holes in it with his teeth, squeeze it flat and eat all the beans as they oozed out of the can. I’d come home to little tin disks laying on the floor, all that remained of the once whole cans of refried beans. I’m not sure there’s anything I want quite that badly, but when I do, I think about those little metal circles and that dog’s powerful nose and jaws.

Finn also taught me about letting people know when enough was enough. We used mouse traps to teach him to stay off the counters (in an effort to curb his refried bean habit!). We also hung them from the Christmas tree to keep Finn away from the tree. It worked for about a week, and then he decided to teach us a thing or two. I came home from work one day to find the mouse traps all pulled off the tree, two of them totally chewed up, five branches chewed off the tree, about six ornaments had been eaten and all the water drank out of the basin. Finn lay in front of the tree with a look of “I showed you” written all over his face.

Needless to say, when I first read Marley and Me by John Grogan, I thought Marley had nothing on Finn. But by the end of the book I had to admit, it would have taken three of my dogs to create all the havoc Marley did. I think that’s one of the reasons we love books like Marley and Me. They help us feel like we don’t necessarily have the worst dog in the world. Finn did have to repeat dog obedience. He loved carrying his own leash, which made the instructor furious. I thought it was cute, which made her even more furious. Come to think about it, maybe I was the one who needed to repeat Beginner Dog Obedience.

Books like Marley and Me also help us remember all the love and joy and yes, lessons that come into our lives with a dog. John Grogan started a trend. Once he wrote the adventures of Marley, our need for dog stories caused an outpouring of writers’ tales about their dogs. Celebrity authors like Dean Koontz got into the act with A Big Little Life a story of his Golden Retriever. Judith Summers wrote about her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in My Life with George. Ed Breslin wrote Drinking with Miss Dutchie about his Black Lab who helped him with his struggle with depression and alcoholism. And Jon Katz wrote about his troubled Border Collie in A Good Dog.

Of course, everyone always asks if the books have sad endings. I’m afraid most of them do. Their about dogs and even if they live long sweet lives their lives are shorter than ours. They almost always leave us behind.

That’s why I have Ben, because J.J., the Newf, and Dexter, my old Golden, are both over thirteen years old. Their days with me are measured in months now, rather than years. Ben is here to ease the pain and to give me new stories and lessons. And he’s in training to be a reading dog at the library, which might help us all be a little less feral.