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A while ago, while I was taking a stroll, I saw a dog rolling in a patch of grass on the sidewalk. It was nuzzling the ground, rubbing its face on one particular spot. It then flipped on its back and lay there for a second or two before repeating the cycle.
It wasn't that much of an unusual display; dogs played in grass. Except, there was something that bothered me; the patch the dog was fixated on was discolored. It had the yellowish quality of dead grass but it wasn't exactly that. As I walked by, wary as I always am around dogs, I got a better look.
What I thought was dead grass was actually frayed clumps of beige fur. And protruding from it, I saw then, was the remains of a dog so far into the cycle of decomposition, that the only thing intact was the fur and the bones. The grass around that spot seemed darker, wilted, as if it absorbed the rot from the decaying carcass. The skull was a black mess of whatever resilient flesh that lingered, the surface not yet polished to ivory by the hands of time.
The dog didn't give me a glance and I followed suit and didn't look at it again. I continued walking down the road. On my way back, the dog was gone. Only the blotch of rot remained.
Once home, a quick search online showed me that this was standard behavior for dogs. And while almost all answers spoke of how dogs generally engage in this act out of any combination of excitement, curiosity and pure instinct, I still can't get the image of that dog out of my head.
Because, there was no excitement. The dog's movements were somber, slow and rhythmic— a devoted ritual done with utmost care and precision. A potent aura of psychosis had permeated from the choreography back then, emptying my lungs, filling it instead with the smell of road kills and dead pets.
Was it an act of desecration? Or an altar for blessings? Probably neither. Perhaps it's just a dog rolling around in the pungent musk of death.
Nothing more.