He also killed hundreds of Italian-Americans dressed up to look like Native Americans. Or so I remember.

We’re going to dinner at BD Wong’s in Tyson’s tonight with a friend of the G’s and her boyfriend. She was in our wedding and the G was in hers before that marriage exploded into alcoholism or crippling debt or an addiction to porn or whatever causes divorces after 13 bliss-less months for 26-year-olds. (None of those are jokes. I may currently have more friends that are divorced than ones that are married.) Since we are not going straight home tonight, I took the dog to see my parents so he could hang out and not pee on the ugly indoor/outdoor carpeting we have in our basement.

My mom reports that about 10 minutes after I left, our idiot hound and their equally stupid dog started howling to no end in the backyard. She’s been sick and was not in the mood to deal with the nonsense so she sent my dad in his bathrobe out to investigate. When he came back, they were still barking but instead of explaining what the deal was he went searching for his camera. Such is his way.

He once carried a cicada around in his pocket.

Turns out, our dog had treed a raccoon and the two of them figured that if they yelled at it long enough it would fall off the branch and into their mouths. My dad gave up on the camera, got the leashes and dragged them inside, where they barked for another 40 minutes until the raccoon left. The dogs have spent the rest of the day running around outside, retelling the story to each other like two middle school kids re-enacting Die Hard at the bus stop.

Of course, my natural reaction to this story was why didn’t my dad kill the raccoon and make a hat out of it like Davy Crockett. He argued that 1) it could have been rabid like the City Paper says and (2 that would be insane. I argued that not having a coon skin hat is insane and he should know because he grew on a farm in the 50s and everyone had crazy hats. He didn’t buy it.

The hat conversation got me thinking about Davy Crockett for maybe the first time in 20 years. The D and I watched hours of the Disney version when we were kids but the only part I can remember is that he killed a bear when he was three and he was a crazy trick shooter. The toddler bear killer story I can understand. Maybe he stepped on a gun or the bear fell on a pointed stick that Crockett was carrying around.

But the trick shot part doesn’t seem to hold up to closer deliberation. The tale, as I remember it, was that he was surrounded by a bobcat and bear who both wanted to get him but he only had one bullet. So he shot a boulder and it split the bullet in half and killed both animals in their heads.

I don’t think that that could happen.

Why would a bear and a bobcat team up to attack a human? It doesn’t make any sense.