One of these days they'll probably come out with a mechanical bird dog that locates pheasants with a special scent detector and radar. A small on-dog computer will record and analyze all available information and give the hunter a report: two roosters and five hens in stubble field-253 feet. A pointer on the dog's back would indicate the exact direction.
    There would be luxury models, of course, with built-in stereo and FM sets, a special compartment for lunches, a cooler for beverages. The dog's nose would be a cigarette lighter.
    The really high-priced jobs would not only retrieve he bird but pluck it, dress it, wrap it in foil, and quick-freeze it. By the time the bird got back to the hunter it would be neat and trim as a TV dinner.
    Since no self-respecting hunter would want to be seen carrying his dog around by a handle, all but the cheapest models would be designed to look like nifty attaché cases. If you passed by some good hunting ground on your way home from work, you could get out and let your attaché case nose around in a thicket or two.
    There would be minor inconveniences ("We'll have to go back, Harry. I thought I had my bird dog but it's just a bag of briefs."), but on the whole, the mechanical bird dog would have many advantages over the standard makes most of us have now.
    Still, I'm something of a traditionalist, and if the mechanical bird dog were to go on the market tomorrow I'd probably stick with my old ready-made hound, such as he is. His eyes don't light up much anymore, let alone his tubes, and you can't light a cigarette on the end of his nose. The sounds that come out of him are not stereo (fortunately) and he has never been much on fidelity any way you look at it. But I would keep him nevertheless. There was a time in my youth, however, when I would have swapped my dog for a mechanical job and thrown in my T-shirt decorated with bottle caps to boot.
    Take the flaws of character you find in all dogs and most human beings, roll them up in the hide of a sickly wart hog, and you would have a reasonable facsimile of my dog Stranger, who was dirty, lazy, bigoted, opinionated, gluttonous, conceited, ill-tempered, and an incorrigible liar.
    An old man once summed up Stranger's character succinctly. "He's a prevert!" he said. I didn't know what preverts were but had no doubt Stranger was one of them.
    We had called the dog Stranger out of the faint hope he was just passing through. As it turned out, the name was most inappropriate since he stayed on for nearly a score of years, all the while biting the hands that fed him and making inside remarks about my grandmother's cooking. Eventually the name was abbreviated to "Strange," which was shorter and much more descriptive.
    My mother used to say that Strange was like one of the family. Then my grandmother would bawl her out and say that was no way to talk about my uncle George. That was one of Mom's favorite jokes and was probably the reason she allowed the dog to stay on the place. At least nobody ever thought of another reason.
    I used to beg for a decent dog-a Labrador retriever, an Irish setter, or just a regular old mongrel like most of the other guys had-but with no success. We just weren't a two-dog family, and since no one in his right mind would take Stranger and Mom wouldn't take advantage of anyone who revealed his low mentality by offering to take Strange, I was stuck with him.
    Strange didn't even make good as a criminal. In our part of the country the worst crime a dog can commit is to run deer. As soon as Strange found this out, he rushed out into our clover field and tried to run the deer that grazed there. They would have none of it. They looked at the wildly yapping creature dancing around them and went back to their munching.
    Strange had only two chores, but he could never get them straight. He was supposed to attack prowlers, especially those whose character bore the slightest resemblance to his own, and to protect the chickens. He always thought it was the other way around.
    Whenever he was caught assaulting a chicken he would come up with some cock-and-bull story about how the chicken had been about to set fire to the house when he, Strange, happened along and prevented arson. "Bad enough we have a dog that attacks chickens, we have to have one that lies about it besides!" Mom would say. (It should be understood that Strange did not actually speak in words, or at least that anyone ever heard, but with his eyes and gestures with feet, tail, and ears.)
    As for prowlers, Strange would go out and invite tramps in off the road for a free meal. While the dog was out in the yard apologizing to the tramp for my grandmother's cooking, the womenfolk would peek out through the curtains and try to determine whether the fellow was dangerous. If so, they would wait until he had just about finished his meal and then my sister would bellow, "Do you want the gun, Ma? Do you want the gun?" This usually would bring the tramp to his feet and send him at a fast walk toward the nearest cover, the ditch on the far side of the road. Even had the gun been real, which it wasn't, the tramp would have been in no danger-unless of course he happened to step between Mom and the dog.
    As soon as I was old enough to hunt I would borrow a shotgun and sneak out to the woods in search of grouse. I had to sneak, not because Mom disapproved of my hunting, but because Strange would insist upon going along and contributing his advice and services. An army of Cossacks could have bivouacked on our front lawn for the night without his knowing a thing about it, but he could hear the sound of a shotgun shell being dropped into a flannel shirt pocket at a hundred yards. Just as I would be easing my way out the door, he would come staggering out of the woodshed, his eyes bloodshot and bleary from a night of carousing, and say, "My suggestion is that we try Schultz's woods first, and then work our way up Stagg's hill and if we don't get anything there we can stop by the Haversteads and shoot some of their chickens."
    Strange made slightly less noise going through the woods than an armored division through a bamboo jungle. Nevertheless, we usually managed to get a few birds, apparently because they thought that anything that made that much noise couldn't possibly be hunting.
    My dog believed in a mixed bag; grouse, ducks, pheasants, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, gophers, skunks, and porcupines. If we saw a cow or horse, he would shout, "There's a big one! Shoot! Shoot!"
    Fortunately, Strange tired of hunting after about an hour. "Let's eat the lunch now," he would say. If he had been particularly disgusting that day, I would lie and tell him that I had forgotten to bring a lunch, knowing that it was against his principle-he only had one-to ever be caught more than an hour's distance away from a food supply. He would immediately strike off for home with the look of a man who has suddenly been deposited in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
    Thus it went through most of the years of my youth, until finally Strange's years totaled what we supposed to be about a dozen. He sensed death approaching-probably the first thing in his life he ever did sense approaching-and one day staggered to a window, looked out and said, "A dog like me should live for a thousand years!" Then he died.
    Everyone wept and said he hadn't been such a bad dog after all. Everyone except my grandmother, who simply smiled to herself as she stirred the gravy.
    That night at dinner I said, "This sure is lumpy gravy," and "This pie crust sure is tough." It seemed the least I could do for Strange.
    As I say, there was a time when I would have traded a dog like Strange in an instant for a mechanical bird dog. But now! Well, let me think about that for a while.