Large Fierce Mammal

For reasons that don’t relate to anything I can remember dreaming about last night, I woke up with a particular song in my head that we’ll get to in a moment. Like most things in my life, it reminded me of a story from personal experience. In this case it’s one that, as in the song, involved a naked man seeking to escape post coital danger.

This is a representative sample of Lunenburg architecture. It is neither a house of ill repute nor a den of iniquity. You can’t see the nearest one of those from this angle.

I happened to be manning the Lunenburg emergency dispatch centre the day it all came to pass, and first learned of the aforementioned unfortunate when I received a phone call complaining of a naked man screaming on the sidewalk in front of a particular address. I continued to receive similar calls until the police and fire rescue units I sent arrived on the scene … but before I get into all that, let’s set the stage.

Lunenburg is a small town on the south shore of Nova Scotia that built its fame and fortune on the fishing industry. The life of a fisherman, even in these modern days, is still a hard and hazardous one. It’s also a conveniently predictable one when viewed from the perspective of those left ashore when he goes to sea.

It’s this predictability that has always been a plague on those mariners unwittingly cursed with significant others of dubious fidelity – the boat sails at known times and returns at known times, plying its trade far out of sight of land from which vantage the cries of passion from the homestead can scarce be heard. In this case, as is common, the unfaithful wife drove her husband to the dock, and kissed him good bye before heading back to the apartment they rented on the top floor of a house fronting on Lincoln Street – Lunenburg’s main drag. The strutting cock in this equation was so hell bent on cuckolding our stout mariner, and so sure of impunity, that, as is said, he was into the wife before the dust of her husband’s departure had settled in the driveway. But into the best laid plans, a little entropy must fall, and so it did on the day in question.

You see, a fishing vessel is a complex machine comprised of an array of implements and equipage critical to the mission of catching fish. In fact, so critical is each component, that the failure of any one of them puts a stop to the entire enterprise until repairs can be effected. A major component, like the winch for example, that deploys and hauls back the fishing tackle, can take a day to repair, and in such cases, the crew is dismissed to home and returns the next day for another go.

Are you with me so far?

Well now, as it happened, our stout mariner’s boat experienced a problem with its own winch, and after several tries by good old fashioned pre-cellular telephony to call his wife for a ride (ironic reference), he hired a taxi and headed home as things back at the homestead were proceeding apace. So it was that after a time, or even a few times perhaps, the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs leading to the only door in or out of the apartment could be clearly heard by the couple engaged in the boudoir within!

By way of clarification, I should point out that Lunenburg is an exceedingly hilly place, with many houses of the sort involved in this case, built into hillsides so that the house is two stories at the back, and three stories at the front. The fisherman’s apartment was accessed from the low side at the back by means of a single flight of exterior stairs. This led first into a small porch which in turn emptied into a hallway that led from back to front, with kitchen, living room, and bedrooms feeding off either side. Straight at the end of the hall, overlooking the street, was the bathroom,. housed in what is locally referred to as a “Lunenburg bump”. If you take a look at the picture that tops this article, you’ll see a yellow door at street level, a set of windows directly above it, and yet another set in the front of a projecting structure that juts out of the roof. Please note that the image does not depict the actual scene of these events, and is offered here purely as a representative sample of the same sort of house, but if were to be that house, then the bathroom would be located behind that upper set of windows, and it was into this that the miscreant fled at the first sound of a key in the lock.

While he may have been unfortunate, our mariner was not stupid. A snoot full of the ambient scent and a glance at his wife was all he needed to assess what was going on, and locate his foe who quivered in fear of his life behind a locked bathroom door he knew would not withstand the mariner’s onslaught for long. The list of injuries reported for the man who subsequently left the bathroom through the window included fractures to his heels, ankles, knees, several leg bones, both wrists, one elbow, and a finger, as well as an assortment of lacerations and contusions. He was fortunate that the mariner’s attentions were absorbed by his wife long enough for professional help to arrive, or the list would have undoubtedly been considerably longer.

I hope all that was worth it as a lead in to the song of the day. Thank you Tex Williams.