Читать книгу The Case of the Coyote Invasion - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: Cheapo Brand Dog Food

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Through our network of spies and undercover agents, we learned that the coyotes were planning a big raid on the chicken house, but that came after the Birdseed Fiasco. I would rather not discuss the BSF, but I guess we must, since it helps explain a few details about the coyote invasion.

See, it wasn’t my fault. If the people around here didn’t want me stealing birdseed, they should have put some decent food in my dog bowl. What’s a dog to do when they put out slop for the dogs? I don’t expect steak for every meal, but for crying out loud!

Okay, let’s slow down and take this one step at a time. I can point to the very moment this whole mess began, Friday afternoon at five o’clock. On a lot of outfits, five o’clock on Friday afternoon means quitting time, the start of a long weekend of fun, frolic, and goofing off. On this ranch, it means nothing of the kind. It means that another endless day of work is fixing to melt into an endless night of work, then another day and another night, on and on.

We have no weekends around here, just work and more work. Am I complaining? No sir. Work is what I do. It’s what I want to do. All I expect is a place to sleep and enough Co-op dog food to keep me going. But, see, that’s where the whole problem began.

At five o’clock that Friday afternoon, Loper returned from a trip to town, wheeled into headquarters, and stopped his pickup in front of the machine shed. I happened to be there and saw the whole thing. He stepped out of the pickup and gave me a grin.

“Hank, this is a good day. I’ve figured out how to cut ten bucks a month off my dog food bill.”

Somehow, that didn’t thrill me, so I went to Slow Puzzled Wags on the tail section.

He continued. “There’s a new store in town: The House of Thrift. Their motto is, ‘We’d skin a flea and sell the hide.’” He chuckled and gave me a wink. “It’s a cowboy kind of store, and they’ve got their own line of dog food.” He pointed to a fifty-pound sack in the back of the pickup. “Cheapo Brand dog food. You’re going to love this, pooch.”

Oh really?

Chuckling to himself, he opened a corner of the sack and filled the overturned Ford hubcap that served as our dog bowl. “Okay, bud, dig in. Tell me what you think.”

I moved my nose closer to the heap of brownish kernels and gave it a sniffing. We’ve discussed Co-op brand dog food, right? It has the smell of stale grease. This stuff had the smell of . . . I couldn’t even describe it. Bad.

I gave him Sad Eyes and Slow Wags, as if to say, “You’re kidding, right? This is a joke?”

His smile faded. “Hank, this isn’t the Waldorf-Astoria. Give it a try, you might be surprised.”

Okay, I gave it a try, one bite, and sure enough, I was surprised. It tasted even worse than I’d expected. It was like cardboard. Goat droppings. I backed away from the bowl and used my tongue to sweep the crumbs out of my mouth.

Angry lines gouged a path across Loper’s face. “Well, it’s dog food, and you’re a dog. When you get hungry, you’ll eat it.” He went to the house, shaking his head and muttering about “fussy eaters.”

Oh yeah? When I got hungry, I might eat tree bark, but I would NOT eat Cheapo. What an outrage, feeding such garbage to the Head of Ranch Security! For years I had put up with the Co-op brand and that had been bad enough, but this stuff made Co-op look like a gourmet meal.

If he thought Cheapo was so good, he ought to eat it himself . . . but of course that would never happen. The people around here would never think of eating anything that came out of a fifty-pound sack, but when it comes to their dogs . . . oh well.

You’ll be proud to know that I imposed a boycott on all Cheapo products. Friday night, I went to bed hungry and by Saturday morning, I was weak from poor nutrition. We’re talking about trembling, stomach growling, hardly able to walk, the whole nine yards of food deprivation.

And that’s what led to the problem with the birdseed. See, I never would have considered . . . we’ll get to that in a minute.

For now, let’s set the stage. Saturday morning came right after Friday night, and Sally May had made plans to drive into town and spend the afternoon, doing . . . what was it? Scrapbooking. She was going to attend a class on how to make scrapbooks, and she had lined up Loper to babysit the children.

And, naturally, I would be in charge of the rest of the ranch while she was gone. No problem there, except that I was in the middle of a Food Boycott.

When Sally May and Little Alfred came out of the house that morning, everybody seemed to be in a good mood. That was important. See, I want My People to be happy and, you know, satisfied that the world is treating them right. I can’t always solve their problems, but by George, I always try—especially when it comes to Sally May, our Beloved Ranch Wife. I lie awake at night, trying to think of ways to make myself the Dog of Her Dreams.

Anyway, I noticed that she and Alfred were out in the backyard, doing something, so I went down to check it out. Since dogs weren’t allowed inside her yard, I stayed outside the fence. Pete, her precious kitty, could come and go as he wished, but the Head of Ranch Security was banned.

That was really weird, but never mind. Since I wasn’t allowed inside the yard, I had to do my observing from outside, and here’s what I saw. Alfred and Sally May pounded a metal post into the ground, just below the kitchen window. On top of the post was a piece of flat metal, a kind of platform, and on that platform they placed a little wooden house. It was about two feet long and one foot wide, and had the kind of slanted roof that you find on ordinary houses where people live.

You’re probably wondering why they had put a little house on top of a metal stake. I wondered about that, too. I mean, it looked like a house but a house for what? I activated Visual Scanners and took a closer look.

Hmmm. This was interesting. Sally May removed the roof of the little house and poured something inside, and you’ll never guess what it was. Give up?

Birdseed.

Yes sir, birdseed, and that gave me the clue I needed to crack this mystery. See, it looked like a house, but it was actually a bird feeder in the shape of a house, and that’s why she poured birdseed inside. Just follow the logic on this: seed-feed-feeder.

At that moment, Drover, my assistant, joined me. “Gosh, what a cute little house. Who’s going to live in it?”

“Nobody’s going to live in it, because it’s not a house. It’s a bird feeder.”

“They’re feeding the birds?”

“Correct, and don’t ask me why.”

He gave it a closer look. “How come they’re feeding birds?”

“I just told you not to ask.”

“Sorry. You don’t know?”

“I have no idea. Why would anyone put out feed for birds? If you feed them, they’ll hang around.”

He sat down and scratched a spot on his ribs. “Well, maybe Sally May likes to watch the birds while she’s working in the kitchen.”

“Maybe so, but it seems a foolish waste of time. Why would she want to watch a bunch of sniveling birds when she could watch . . . well, us for example?”

He gave me a silly grin. “Well, we don’t do much.”

“You don’t do much. For your information, I put in eighteen hours a day on this ranch, but do these people ever take the time to watch me? Do they notice all the things I do to keep this outfit running? Oh no, they want to watch birds.”

“Well, birds are kind of pretty. Oh look.” He pointed toward the yard. Sally May and Alfred had gone back into the house, and a bird had come to the feeder. “It’s a cardinal.”

I squinted toward the feeder. “That bird isn’t a cardinal, he’s a moocher. He’s stealing birdseed.”

“Well, I think the whole idea is for the birds to eat the seeds.”

I glared down at the runt. “Drover, the bird is a moocher. Furthermore, he makes noise, and I don’t like birds. If you want to sit here and watch moocher-birds all day, that’s fine, but I have a ranch to run.”

I whirled away and left him sitting in the shubbles of his own rubble. The very idea! I mean, who has time to sit around and watch a bunch of little tweet-tweets stealing birdseed? Not me.

But you know what? I found myself watching them anyway and, just as I expected, what I saw really got under my skin—a constant parade of cardinals, twitteries, tweeties, sparrows, and other birds with two wings and a beak. Dozens of birds. I didn’t want to get involved in a bird situation, but those bums were stealing us blind and someone needed to do something.

So I did what any normal American dog would have done. I went back to the yard fence, set up a firing position near the gate, and made preparations to bark at the birds. For some reason, Drover began backing away, then vanished like a puff of smoke. That was fine. I didn’t want him distracting me when I began lobbing Mortar Barks at the feeder.

My barrage of barking worked like a charm. After five minutes of steady barking, I had cut the crime rate by 63 percent. Another thirty minutes, and I would have . . .

The back door opened, and out stepped Sally May. Good. She had seen my work, and I knew that she would be . . .

“Hank, stop barking at the birds!”

Huh?

“You’re scaring them away.”

Well, sure, but that was the whole point. See . . .

“Find something else to do, and leave my birds alone.” Slam! She went back into the house.

Well, what do you say? I couldn’t think of anything. It left me speechless. She didn’t seem to understand what was going on in her own yard. I was about to leave the promises . . . the premises, let us say . . . I was about to leave the premises of the promises when something else caught my eye.

It had four legs, hair, and a tail. It was rubbing its way down the fence, and it wore an annoying smirk on its mouth. You’ll never guess what it was.

A cat.