David Green Has Rabies

"David!" "David!"

It was a fall afternoon as my family drove down Jeffrey Street in Port Perry to our home after a weekend away at a family friend's house in Georgetown. The trees which lined the street were overloaded with colourful leaves, some of which had already started to fall.

As always, we drove fairly slowly down our street as there were usually kids everywhere, especially on nice fall afternoons like this one. We passed Mr. Green, our neighbour, walking down the street towards Trans General Store. Charlene and I waved but Mr. Green didn't seem to notice as he seemed very preoccupied, looking all around as he walked, as if he lost something.

Behind him was Mrs. Nicks, the neighbour on the other side of the Greens, who also seemed to be looking for something or someone.

As we passed the local town hall across from my parent's house, there were Kelly Green and Dora Nicks looking in the trees by the parking lot fence.

That's when we heard it, "David!" "David!"

"Ah", we all thought together.

"David's lost again"

David Green and his sister Kelly were my neighbours in Port Perry for the entire time I lived there, from the day we arrived when I was barely 4 years old until the day I left to go to university. Kelly was my sister's age, a year older than me, and David was a year younger than me.

Being 5 years old, I had known David and Kelly for just over a year now and David hiding from everyone had become a fairly regular event. At that age I felt much older than David, for I spent each afternoon school day in Kindergarten. I enjoyed being in a real school rather than the daycare David went to.

On the other side of David’s house lived the Nicks. Annie Nicks was also 4 years old, like David, and the three of us used to spend each morning playing together. Every morning about 9am, the three of us would meet by the old tree on my parent's property where the trunk was a little horizontal near the base and the three of us would climb up on it and sit there and talk. I used to love telling them all about what school was like; what I was learning each day, I'd talk about new world open to me by reading and I’d describe learning to tie my shoes as though it was a course on quantum physics. I enjoyed being older. Of course every now and then I’d make it a point to remind them that I'd be passing by the corner store on my way to school so I'd probably be getting myself some candy.

On this particular Sunday afternoon, everyone was home and out looking for David, which as I mention, was not totally unusual...David wasn’t a bad kid, he just loved to wander around the neighbourhood and had no sense of time.

"David!" "David!"

My family soon joined the search, spreading out and yelling for him every few feet. I travelled over to the church and then the graveyard where we used to go and play, without any luck. Back to my parent's house, through the field and down to my grandparent's house where we looked all around the bushes and trees, yelling David's name as we searched.

Nothing. No luck in finding him or a trail leading to David whatsoever.

After about an hour of looking, which was much longer than it normally took I decided to go home to get something to eat. I was hungry. We hadn't eaten since lunch and by this time it was about 5:30pm.

I was a little worried at this point. David had been known to be accident prone. It was only the week before that while David and I were playing cars in my basement, my father, who was doing laundry in the next room, yelled out for me to help him and David jumped up instead yelling, "I'll help you!"

Soon, my father had loaded David’s arms with clean laundry in a pile that went way over his head and then sent him upstairs to drop it off on one of the beds. David was struggling to manage the load and the stairs and he didn't climb more than a few stairs before he turned his head to me, head jammed against the wall of sheets, and with a big smile said, "Look Max, I'm helping your Dad!"

That's when he fell off the stairs.

Yes. He fell. Headfirst too!

There was no railing or wall on either side of the stairs at that point in time. And David fell off.

Luckily, and I can’t imagine how this was even possible, David fell headfirst into the dirty clothes bin which was against the side of the stairs. He fell head first right in. All around was a cement floor and he picked the one spot in the whole room with a soft landing.

Have I mentioned that David was also the luckiest kid I know?

With nothing more than a scrape and a few tears, he was back to playing in minutes.

As I ate my banana, I wondered what could have happened to my friend.

Maybe an animal had gotten him, I thought to myself. I had just learned in school about rabid animals and how if someone got bit by a rabid animal they’d instantly get rabies and them would have to get something like sixty needles right in the stomach. Of course I told David and Annie all about it during our morning talks. Every animal that we saw for the next few days we examined closely to see if it was frothing at the mouth. Frogs didn't count, not having teeth, but everything else we saw as having the potential of a frothing rabies threat.

After thinking about all these things, I decided I better keep looking for David, just in case. But first I needed my magnifying glass, which was in my bedroom, just in case there were any clues that needed close examination.

I ran to my bedroom and opened the door.

There was David. Fast asleep on my floor, mouth wide open, snoring away and covered in cookie crumbs. Toy car in each one of his hands and the cookie bag was crumpled to the side of him.

"David!" I screamed.

We never locked our front door. No one did during those years, and I guess David went into our house that morning to play with my toys and fell fast asleep.

David awoke quickly and I told him he was in trouble for being missing. I grabbed my magnifying glass before following David out of the bedroom and out the front door of my house.

"I found David everyone! I found David!", as I held up my magnifying glass high in the air as if it was my deduction skills that had accomplished this feat.

With David found and another mystery solved, everyone let out a sigh of relief and trudged back to their homes. Just like that, another weekend was almost over.

That night, after our weekly game of hide-and-go-seek with all the kids on our block, we were playing in the leaves at the front of my house. We'd make a big pile of leaves and run and jump in them.

After a jump from David, he yelled out "Mouse!"

And yes, there was indeed a mouse running right by him...the mouse must have been hiding in the leaves and when David jumped, the mouse made a run for it. As quick as the mouse itself, and without any fear, David reached out to grab the mouse but missed and the mouse ran over David's hand.

David started to laugh, showing us where the mouse had scratched his hand. I guess he thought it was cool...that is until Annie and I started yelling to him that he now had rabies and needed to get sixty needles in his stomach. Then he started to cry. We weren't joking though or trying to mean, we actually thought this was how one got rabies.

We started screaming for David's mom who came outside soon after and we informed her, while David cried that David had been bitten by a very large mouse. Yes, we told her, very large and very mean.

Mrs. Green took David inside to wipe away his tears. There was indeed a tiny scratch on his hand so they cleaned that up too and decided to take him down to the hospital emergency just in case.

That's when David's crying stopped and sheer terror set in. His eyes and mouth opened wide and he knew, as did Annie and I, that this meant sixty needles in the stomach.

We yelled out "Rabies!", "David's got rabies!"

And while David's parent's assured us all that David did not have rabies and they were going to the hospital just for a check-up, it didn't do much good to alleviate our collective fears.

So, they shooed us away, and away we went over to my parent's front steps, too afraid to step on the grass for fear of rabid mice. There, we talked about how David might die.

I still remember to this day David's red face, wailing as he held his Mom's hand as she literally dragged him to the car.

"It was only a frog!" he screamed. "IT WAS ONLY A FROG!!!"