Dear Justin,
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One evening about two years ago my husband and I took Libby and Buster for our evening jog on a route that took us by the corner of Diversey and Halsted. On this particular evening it was raining. When we approached the northwest corner of Diversey and Halsted our dogs started yelping like I’ve never heard before. Like you, we thought that they were stepping on something. We were immediately able to get them across the street, at which time Buster seemed unfazed and Libby totally frenzied and scared. My husband had to carry Libby home all the way to Wrightwood and Racine. The dog who was returned to the rescue shelter three times and finally felt she was “rescued” by her forever family glared at us in disbelief and distrust as if we had deliberately abused her. I racked my brain trying to imagine what had happened to Libby and Buster. After a week of sleepless nights, horrified by the images of Libby yelping and gyrating on the street corner and worried that she would never trust us again, we let the incident go and rerouted our evening jog.
As I was walking home from the el that evening I purposely passed by the scene. I surveyed the area for any clue that would explain what happened earlier that day. Broken glass? Thorns from a tree? Nails from the rehab construction that Wrightwood Tap was undergoing? As I was retracing the steps and expanding my search within a five-foot radius of our path, I didn’t realize that I was about to step on the culprit: a live, exposed wire sticking out of the ground where a street lamp used to be. Frustrated by my inability to solve the mystery, I proceeded home.
E-mails (“Sparks Fly in Lincoln Park”) and pictures to the local CBS, NBC, and ABC affiliates yielded no response. An e-mail to the Chicago Tribune resulted in a reporter correcting my usage of the term electrocution, as that apparently means “to cause death” and not simply to cause harm or trauma. And while our story was ignored, Libby’s improvement over the next few weeks became more evident.
