CAN DOGS FLY?
A few months after the failed Project CATBIRD experience, we were starting to wonder what else might fly. The logical choice was a dog. This may seem like a simple conclusion but many hours went into this selection. We also considered fish, hamsters, rabbits, turtles, and pigs. Since we didn't have access to any of these other animals we used a dog taken from a neighbors yard. The dog "volunteered" by barking all the time. Late at night and early in the morning Fido would bark and howl and carry on. We knew that he must have been depressed, stuck in that yard, yearning for a higher purpose. We had "higher" if thats what it was going to take.
The noisy hound, Fido.
It wasn't easy getting Fido out of his yard. He was always barking and the neighbors would open the sliding patio door and yell when we tried to get close enough to free him from captivity. We had to make a plan. We had some ether left over from college. It was actually a friends. He went to school out of state and never got married. Says he hasn't found the right girl. The girls all like him well enough. He goes shopping with them and everything. They all say they aren't threatened by him at all. Lucky guy. He gets to travel alot too. Works as a flight attendant. . .
So we rigged up this pie plate with a big hamburger patty on one side and a wadded up hankerchief, soaked in ether, tied to the other. We used a big old stick to push the plate into the yard. Fido barked at first, then he discovered the beef. He started chowing on that burger and before long he fell to his "knees" but continued to eat. Then he fell on his side, his tounge stretching out to lick the meat. Halfway through the lick he was out. We ran into the yard and grabbed the dog. He seemed alot bigger than he had before. We put him in the trunk and drove to the launch site. Luckily we planned ahead this time and brought a camera with a flash.
Back to the I-15 overpass
We set out with the same objectives as Project CATBIRD. We had never heard if dogs always landed on their feet or not. We would soon find out. We got to the launch site at 1:30am. Not much traffic at all. We pulled Fido out of the trunk. He seemed a bit grogy still. We gave him a drink of Dr. Pepper to perk him up. He wagged his tail and looked at us with anticipation. We knew what that meant. We got the camera ready and walked Fido to the edge of the overpass. "Go Fido!", We chanted. He just looked at us. We didn't know what to think at first. Fido was THEE dog. He was the chosen flight tester. We understood. He wanted us to be a part of this moment. We all grabbed a part of the dog and lifted him over the jersey barrier. Fido was so exited he scratched the piss out of us! We knew it was time, no cars around. . . 3-2-1 LAUNCH! Fido did the same thing as the cat. twisting and turning through the air with no sence of direction. In all of the exitement we forgot to take mid-air pics. How disapointing. when we got down to the lower level we saw that dogs dont always land on their feet. From the rupture it looked like Fido hit on his side and burst his abdomen on impact.
Fido sure was heavy. He must have hit hard from over 100'. We found some success. Even though he didn't fly, we found that dogs dont land on their feet.