Snap.

The sky is blue glass.

It is the mixing bowl my mom uses to whip eggs with cream for omlettes.  The electric sapphire marbles my dad puts on the bottom of clear vases for yellow flowers.  The little snippets of glass my sister found on the beach when she was young and kept in a jar to share with her kids when she was older. The broken bottles my brother and I dug up in the woods by our house and cleaned out with warm water and put on our windowsills.

It is the perfect sky. It is the perfect night.

The air feels warm on the skin, the first time since last October. I take Apacha with me to run to the grocery, an attempt to hang out since I have been out of the house all day. He likes riding in cars. He knows cars lead to parks and hikes and adventures. I was going to zip home after the grocery to work on an essay due for class tomorrow, but as we come close to Frick I can't keep my eyes off the blue glass sky. My windows are down and the warm evening air lingers and swirls around us with temptation.

I want to see the view from the bench at night. I imagine the dots of homes on the rolling hills of Pittsburgh will be filled with families finishing dinner and settling into a book or a television show. I want to see the headlights of the cars moving from one place to another. I want to watch the smoke from the nearby factories disappear into the blue glass. Apacha wants all this too--a night adventure through Frick.

We only see a couple of people at the entrance of the park, and they are all leaving. Once again, Apacha and I have the park to ourselves. The sky is in the middle of light and dark, it seems it wants to stay in this day, this time, this near perfection.

As we walk down the hill, I call Matt who is traveling from Boulder to me. He is in Kansas. I wonder what his sky looks like as he drives the open, flat land. Apacha runs ahead as I talk to Matt. Together we are all looking at the sky. Matt asks me what my favorite cheese is, a question I had just asked him while I was at the grocery.

Apacha runs down the hill. He is about a hundred feet in front of me. I step the hill slowly, lost in the conversation with Matt, looking to the sky, admiring its rich blue hues. A soft breeze plays the air and the silhouettes of the limbs of the trees move strategically to its melody. My eyes swallow it up. Sometimes, it's too beautiful. I could just look and look and get lost in it all for hours.

My eyes scan the horizon for Apacha. They find the outline of a black creature. Apacha sees it too and he is only a few feet from it.

"Fuck," I yell, "Apacha NO!"

The creature freezes as Apacha pounces over.  His wildness takes over. He becomes another animal, an animal with intent to snap a neck and kill.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Hold on Matt. APACHA NO. Drop it."

My body runs, no sprints towards the scene. I don't know what Apacha has in his mouth but he is thrashing it around like a beast. The creature's neck in Apacha's jaw. The juxtaposition of the two is maddening. The creature plays dead and hangs limp from Apacha's alive and hungry mouth.

When I get to them I see the raccoon's eyes. I throw Apacha's leash down right next to him to startle and bring him out of the moment. Apacha notices but does not release the coon. I spank Apacha on his butt and grab his collar. The coon falls from his mouth.  It plops on the ground, lifeless but not dead. I move Apacha into the grass and make him lay too. I have to show power over the situation even though I am crying. Both animals are motionless under the blue glass. One with fear in his eyes and the other with the pure satisfaction of a catch. Although Apacha is in trouble with me, he is proud of himself, his second catch in our time together, the first being a rooster on a farm I worked at last summer in Belfast, Maine. 

I don't know what to do. The raccoon moves his frame a bit. It is startled and shocked. The beast still lingers. I get Matt back on the phone.

"Fuck. I don't know what to do."

I am starting to panic for the raccoon. I don't want him to die. His little grey highlighted eyes rest in my mind. He is cute and innocent. He was probably just coming out of the woods for the evening, waking up for his day under the moon.

Matt calms me down and makes some suggestions. Get Apacha out of there. Call animal control. Is there anyone else around? Does the raccoon look rabid? Did Apacha get bit? Is there any blood?

"I don't know. Apacha has his rabies shot. He's fine, I'm worried about the raccoon."

The sky moves from blue glass to a deep navy. I can't really see anything. I just see the reflection of the raccoon's eyes in woods. He doesn't move. I hang up with Matt and call my roommate Maggie. She doesn't answer. I look up the number for animal control. Maggie calls back. She can sense the panic in my voice that shakes as I retell the story. She suggests calling animal control too, reiterating it wouldn't hurt. She offers to come to the park.

"It's okay. I'm going to call animal control."

I hang up with Maggie and call animal control.  A man answers and seems distracted.

"Animal control."

"I would like to report a raccoon that appears to be hurt at Frick park."

I lie to the man. I don't tell him that my dog attacked the raccoon. 

"Where are you in the park?" the man asks.

I try to explain the location--down the treeline, off the path, across from the section that breaks off and goes to the dog park. The man can't pinpoint where I am. I explain again.

"So you are close to the dog park?" he wonders. He still seems distracted.

"No, I am down the hill across from the path that leads to the dog park."

"Where is the racoon?"

I had distanced Apacha and I from the raccoon and the farther away we got the more the raccoon hobbled back into the woods.

"A couple feet back from the treeline."

Explaining our location in the dark to a man who seemed disinterested was frustrating me more.

"What's your phone number?" he asks.

I give it to him, and he says they will call when they get there, though he doesn't know when that will be.

"How long?" I wonder.

"I don't know. It could be an hour. Could be more."

It is dark now and I know I can't wait around until they get there.

I decide to head back to my car to get Apacha out of the scene and wait there for a little bit. I wait for about twenty minutes and head home. They never call.

On the drive home, I think about the situation. I think about Apacha's instincts, his wildness. If I were completely removed from the situation and this was in the wild, nature would have been taking its course. But here, now, I have to intervene. I cannot stand by and watch my dog kill another creature. Even though it is what he wants, it is not what I want to see or experience. I think about natural order and how if it were up to Apacha he would hunt and gather for himself. He would tear into raccoons, and rabbits and chickens.  His head would align evenly with the rest of his body as he stalks his prey, then pounce on them to take them by the neck and snap and kill and devour.

But he is not that animal with me.

Do I take away from his wildness?