When I was young, my grandparents had a dog that took up on the farm – a “suck-egg dog,” as my grandpaw called him. He said a suck-egg dog was a no-account bum of a beast who had to be cordoned off from the chicken house lest he gobble down all the eggs, hence the moniker – suck-egg dog. Why they didn’t call him an egg-eating dog or a egg-stealing dog is anybody’s guess. But suck-egg was the name given this particular hound and he wasn’t too bothered by it, either. He seemed honored. He liked raw eggs and saw no reason to be ashamed.
I knew this dog loved eggs because when I was small and the dog was a puppy, he used to go to the chicken house with me and I’d break some eggs over his knot head while we were in the smelly chicken hut. He’d slurp them down yoke to white, and his tongue was ample enough to clean off even the top of his head. One day I told my grandpaw about this dog’s desire for eggs and my giving him a few now and then.
“So you turned him into a suck-egg dog,” said grandpaw.
“I reckon he was a suck-egg dog before I broke that first egg on his noggin,” said, feeling kind of guilty for my responsibility in pointing this misbegotten canine toward a life of suck-egg worthlessness. It was as if I’d gotten him hooked on heroin and now he had a chicken embryo on his back.
“No,” said Grandpaw. “He might have gone his whole life never knowing what an egg tasted like. You ruined that mutt. Once they get a taste for eggs, they’re done.”
Grandpaw was trying to look mean, but I could see his insides laughing even though his outsides were all grizzled up and snarly.
“Don’t ever break and egg over a dog’s head.” Stern look.
“Yessir.” Scared look.
And that was it.
Sucking eggs turned out to be the least of the dog’s problems, as he eventually turned into a car-chasing dog (even though I never, not once, showed him how to chase a car) and on a Friday payday at the cotton mill, he caught one. His suck-egg days were over. It fell to me to bury him, since Grandpaw seemed to think I had turned him into a doggy delinquent in the first place.
I put him in a croaker sack, lowered the old boy below the wiregrass and asked God to forgive me for my sin of leading him astray. The Lord didn’t say anything, so I assumed I was OK.
A few weeks later, a possum broke into the chicken house and sucked more than his share of eggs, and Grandpaw hammered him like a sack of ten-penny nails. I stood at the door the night Grandpaw ball-peened the possum, holding a flashlight so he could see to do the dirty deed.
“Look-a there, I didn’t teach that possum to be a suck-egg possum,” I said, still trying to absolve myself of the stain of the recently deceased.
“Naw,” said Grandpaw. “That damned suck-egg dog probably taught him.”
I still feel guilty, since I obviously started some kind of suck-egg chain of events that may still be going on down home all these years later. So this is a cautionary tale for you folks who might, in a moment of weakness, decide to break an egg over a dog’s head. Don’t. You will condemn him to a like of suck-eggery that will most assuredly cause his eternal downfall.
