Lula (My Girl)

by Jack Davis

The End

Lula or Lulabelle, as I later called her, succumbed to life on April 15, 2003, my birthday.

The Beginning

Lula (My Girl), original print cover.

Lula's early life must have been hard; it certainly wasn't the usual for the times, so I am told. Her father was a travelin' man and long gone when Lula was born, never having anything to do with her or her mother after the event. Lula was taken from her mother and placed in her first foster home when just weeks old. Evidently, that family could not or did not want to care for her and she was passed off to her second foster family when she was around two years old. I don't know of her treatment at the hands of the first family but they didn't want her.

I met Lula in the fall of 1992 while she was in the care of her second set of foster parents. Her foster father at the time, Doug, had brought her and her sister up to our hunting camp at the Lake Delancy campground in the Ocala National Forest for a week. He wasn't even sure of her age as her birth records had become lost or misplaced. He told me that he had gotten her and her sister from their first foster home after the parents decided the girls weren't compatible with the family, whatever that meant.

Lula wasn't a big girl and the feature fairy hadn't really been kind to her. She had been gifted, to put it kindly, with big ears and a big nose. Both of these features were much larger than normal. Heck, you could pull her ears forward and almost pinch them together in front of her nose, they were so big. These features didn't detract from her appearance unduly, however, and were outweighed by her large, sad, brown eyes and soft hair. She had an outgoing personality and was curious about everything and would wander off if not overseen closely.

In spite of her hardships Lula was a naturally loving and caring girl. The first time she saw me she ran to the end of the tether tied to her to keep her from wondering off into the woods, lifted her head when I bent down to her and gave me a great big kiss. In fact Lula gave up kisses so readily I soon started calling her Lula the Love Sponge. She would dote upon anyone that gave the slightest hint of paying attention to her. She seemed to be starved for affection.

As the week progressed, we became almost inseparable when I wasn't out hunting. When I ate something, she would sidle up close to get a bite or two. If I sat by the fire, she came over to me, often staying until bedtime. I knew by the end of the week that she was special. I would have begged Doug to let me take her home but Pam, my wife, didn't want another little one around. She was adamant about it so I just enjoyed Lula when she came to camp with Doug for subsequent weekends and over the years. I never did get close to her sister.

I was fortunate enough to be involved with Lula's first hunting experience. That opportunity came about several weeks after I met her. My brother, Fred, and I had gone out hunting and he had shot a deer just at dusk. I went into the woods and tracked the animal. Finding it dead, I dragged it out of the brush to the edge of the woods road from which I had started. I left the carcass there and went back to camp to get Doug to come and help us. He had brought Lula up again that weekend. I wanted to bring her out to the woods with us that evening. I showed Doug the tracks and he said we could let Lula give it a go. We put a leash ... oh, that's right ... I forgot to mention Lula was a dog. A beagle to be precise, and what a beagle!

Lula wasn't a beautiful beagle but her long ears and big nose were not as much of a drawback as they would have been for someone not of her ilk. She was somewhat long and frumpy for a beagle with a small potbelly. Her long ears gave her the look of a basset hound and Pam, still my wife, called Lula her little basset hound all the time after she met her.

Lula was tri-colored with white, black and tan and had the little black Elvis sideburns that most beagles have. At the back of her neck she had a blaze shaped like a short fat lightning bolt. On her brow she had a white line thicker at the back than at the front and it extended down between her eyes. It was not centered but was offset over the left eye as you looked at her. It gave her an uneven appearance. Her eyes were brown with irises as big as saucers. A candle burning many feet away would light up her eyes like daylight. You could never take a picture with a flash with her eyes not glowing like small suns.

Lula did thrive on attention and enjoyed giving it. She never saw a face she didn't want to put her tongue on or a lap she didn't want to sit in. When petted, Lula would purr. Purr ... not like a finicky feline sounding like a small outboard motor but with a series of soft grunts and groans that clearly expressed her pleasure at having her ear scratched or her eyes rubbed. She also was a great beggar and a polite one until later years. She would sit nearby with a soulful look on her face, a look that screamed, "Hey pal, I haven't eaten for a week and you are going to sit there and wolf down every morsel?"

Doug had been told that she was two to four years old when she was given to him as a castaway. We never did learn her real age but decided to use the two-year benchmark. We later ascribed March 29 as her birthday. The reason for this will be explained later. Ahh ... suspense!

"Lula, the Lovesponge."

The Rest of the Story

Anyway, back to the first hunt. The fella that gave Lula to Doug had told him that she and her sister would not hunt and had bad noses, meaning in hunters' parlance that they were not able to or would not follow or track a deer. That proved to be true with Lula's sister but nothing could have been farther from the truth when it came to Lula, as we were about to learn.

Continued—»