Bunchers, Revisited

“Only don't tell me you're innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and makes me very angry.”

-Michael, speaking to Carlo

The Godfather

           

       

    

            In the blog before last, I admitted I wasn’t sure what a buncher was, only that the Minnesota Animal Rescue said they snatched dogs. And that they scared Vito and I. That’s it. For all I knew, bunchers picked bananas for orangutans.

            An astute reader commented and explained that bunchers steal “bunches” of dogs and cats. Then, they sell them as a “bunch” to laboratories and dog fighting groups.

            “So sad,” she wrote.

            It’s horrible. But there’s hope. Upon a second read of the Minnesota Dog Rescue website, it appears bunchers are the most incompetent and stupid “bunch” of criminals ever.

            In other words, The Godfather, Don Vito Corleone, does not exactly run this crew. Even Fredo, the son with ricotta cheese for a spine, could pull off a heist better than these Bozos.

            The website detailed three dog-snatching attempts by bunchers. As you will see, all failed:

            *A man saw a buncher run up to his front porch and steal his dachshund. Luckily, the man lived by a four-way stop. He ran into the street in front of the buncher’s car, which was halted at the Stop sign. “What are you doing with my dog?” the owner screamed. The buncher panicked, threw the dachshund out the car window, and blasted away.

            While the buncher apparently thought nothing of stealing a beloved pet to toss into a dogfight, he respected traffic laws enough that in the middle of a crime, he came to complete standstill at a Stop sign.

            *A woman said that she noticed two men in a blue truck with a loud muffler drive slowly past her front yard, on and off, for three weeks. Finally, one guy, a buncher, got out and called her dogs. “Come here puppy … Want this? … Come here,” he called. Luckily, the dogs’ owner had been standing on her front porch the whole time and rushed outside. The guy jumped back in the truck and the pair zoomed off.

            Let me get this straight. Bunchers, with a muffler backfiring like a Russian machine gun, staked out a house for three whole weeks. They then waited for the precise moment that the lady of the house stood at her front door, looking them straight in the eye, to finally kidnap her dogs. Brilliant.

            *And finally, one morning, while a man was in his garage, his dog Mason strolled by -- free. Mason wasn’t in the fenced area where the owner had left him the night before. Upon investigation, it was discovered that a buncher had squatted by the fence ‘til the wee small hours. He had used wire cutters to snip the fence just enough to catch the dog and pull him out. The buncher was gone, but the dog wasn’t.

            In the ultimate poker game of Mason's life, he stood safely within the confines of his fence, staring down the buncher, without blinking. After the buncher could take no more of the doggie stare-down, he fled the scene. When the coast was clear, the pup – who had completely outsmarted the buncher -- slipped through the fence for a night on the town.

            So now I know what a buncher is. I can even write the definition:

            Buncher (bunch *er) n

            1. A member of a criminal organization that is not the mafia.