Flattered, the mice chattered in a group. Then the medium-sized mouse stepped forward to play devil’s advocate. “We’re safe here. Who would disturb Monticello? Who would even put out a cigarette butt on Mr. Jefferson’s walkway, much less bomb the place? We have no need of politics.”
“Oh, but you do,” Sneaky warned. “Monticello is a symbol to the world of freedom. There are people out there who fear freedom for other people, and of course we know they care nothing for animals. Those enemies are outside our country’s borders, and within, as well. People who want to control others, who want to put the bit in a human’s mouth like they do a horse. Support from Monticello’s mice would be wonderful, and think about this if you don’t think much of me: How long before the exterminator fogs out this dome? There’s more and more human regulation. All that has to happen is someone sees evidence that you live here and it’s curtains!”
“Oh, no!” The little mouse wrung his front paws.
“They’re losing their reason,” Sneaky said, off and running in her speechifying mode.
“They think they have a greater right to this house than you do,” Pewter added, fueling the fire.
“But we were born in this house!” the big mouse squeaked. “We have document fragments that our great- and great-great-great-grandparents saved from the wastebaskets. We have fragments of Mr. Jefferson’s notes. Have they no shame? How dare they!”
“They can and they will if we don’t stand up for our rights. We are all Americans.” Sneaky was getting the hang of campaigning.
The big mouse stepped forward. “When the time is right, we will publicly support you.”
After warm goodbyes, the three visitors retraced their steps and met up with Tucker, promising to tell her everything later. Silently dashing under the sleeping wren’s tree, they reached the truck just as people were gathered on the front steps of the director’s house. Their historical meeting was over, but they couldn’t stop talking. Humans everywhere seemed to love the sound of their own voices.
Sneaky, the leanest and most athletic of the animals, hunkered down, then sprang up, sailing through the window. She pushed on the door latch so Tally, Tucker, and Pewter could scramble in. It was hardest for Tucker, but she made it. They spread out on the seat, pretending to be asleep.
Their human reached the door, noticed it was ajar, and opened it to view the three animals sleeping.
“Aren’t you all good kids?” She slid in, put the key in the ignition, fired up the motor.
As the truck pulled out of the drive, the two dressage horses owned by Leslie and her daughter shook their heads. They had just observed the cats and dogs making it back into the car in the nick of time.
The big bay gelding laconically said, “Just when you think you’ve seen everything. I wonder what Mr. Jefferson would have said.…”
Cowbirds and the Trickle-Down Theory
“Never.” Great Bess clamped her mouth shut, although sweet grass stuck out of it.
The lower pastures by the narrow river branch grew the best hay.
“What about you?” Sneaky Pie asked the second heifer: an old Angus.
“I’m with Great Bess.” The black heifer, Addie, agreed with her Baldy friend, who was half Angus, half Herford.
Tally, a sometimes irritant to the two girls, blared, “It’s because Sneaky Pie wants a mutt for a running mate, isn’t it? I mean, she should choose me. Everyone loves a Jack Russell.”
Great Bess lowered her big head. “I don’t. You’re a pain in the ass.”
“Me?” The dog’s warm brown eyes opened wide.
“You, you little hairy rat dog. I am sick of you chasing Addie and me.”
Addie nodded. “No matter how often I kick, you slip by me and under me. And you have the nastiest bark in the world.”
Sneaky, hoping to divert a bovine bitchfest, stepped closer to Addie. “I could name a Baldy or an Angus to my cabinet.”
“Politics stinks.” Great Bess spat out her grass. “What you want to mess with that stuff for?”
“I can make things better,” the tiger cat stoutly replied.
“Bull.” Addie snorted. They both laughed, as the bull had been dead for years.
“Tell me why you won’t help me,” said Sneaky.
“It’s because you want a mutt for a running mate,” Tally repeated.
“Shut up, Tally. They didn’t know anything about a running mate.”
Addie glowered at the rough-coated pack of dynamite. “Well, we know you sure shouldn’t pick Tally. You nip at us, you run your mouth all the time, and your tone is so piercing. Awful. And worse than all that, you got no more sense than a yellow stick.”
Tally wondered: Did a yellow stick have sense? This kept her quiet for a moment or two.
“And you run in circles,” Great Bess added to her complaints. “Makes me dizzy. Jack Russells are living proof that humans are mental, seriously mental. They could have just stuck with cocker spaniels, you know.” She winked her big eye at Addie.
Both big girls laughed uproariously, hay bits, grass blades falling out.
Tally dragged out the old complaint. “Cocker spaniels were ruined by breeders in the nineteen thirties.”
“You were ruined from the get-go,” said Addie. The little heifer blew stuff out her nostrils right at the dog, who dodged it.
Sneaky Pie looked at Tally, then at the bovine girls. “All I want is to know why you won’t support me. The cattle industry is one of the biggest moneymakers in agriculture. You could say that cattle made this nation, and if anyone argues that, you can sure say cattle made the West.”
“True.” Addie nodded.
Sneaky Pie had done her homework. “Last year cattle brought in about seventy-four billion dollars, and that doesn’t count ancillary business—you know, the feed stores, the feed lots, the vaccines and vets. There’s a lot of money made by you all and a lot of money around you. What about the barns built for you all, and special run-in sheds? And cattle are predicted to make even more money this year. Big, big bucks.”
“So they can kill us and eat us.” Great Bess forcefully hit the nail on the head. “If you’re president, you can’t stop that. Each year between thirty-two and forty million steers and heifers are slaughtered. They eat meat and”—she reached out to nip at Tally—“so do you.”
“Well, I am an obligate carnivore,” Sneaky honestly replied. “If I don’t eat meat, I die.”
“Well, you eat more fish and chicken than cow,” Addie said. “But if you become president, you can’t shut down a huge industry.”
“No. That’s true, but I can make it more humane.”
“Get those humans to eat chicken, or just carrots.” Addie kept her eye on Tally, but the carrot remark made Great Bess jump in.
“She’s right. Humans aren’t obligate carnivores. They can exist on vegetables and wheat, stuff like that.” Great Bess flicked her ear.
“That’s true, too,” said Sneaky, “but even if I could convince humans to change their habits, it would take years. You can’t just pull the plug on something as big as the cattle market. At least if I can make this feed-lot process and the trip to the killer more humane, that’s a step in the right direction.”
“You two never went to market.” Tally sidestepped another lunge by Addie.
“No,” said Great Bess. “We live in paradise. Good pasture, lots of water, sometimes grain—plus, the human comes down to feed us apples. Oh, I love apples. We’re lucky. We came to a good person when we were calves.”
“Yes, but back to the central problem,” said Sneaky. “This isn’t a cattle farm. This is hay and timber, mostly. She would make a lot more money if she did run cattle.” Sneaky considered this. “She can’t take anything to be slaughtered. Just can’t do it, so she struggles. Do you know how much money she could make with a herd of one hundred head of high-grade cattle? Let’s say she sold fifty each year and bred back the best fifty, which she kept. At today’s price, and I know this becau
se I heard it on the ag report on the radio, cattle are bringing four dollars and forty cents a pound, give or take. She’d make about two hundred thousand dollars once you subtract the feed and the net costs, et cetera. The four-forty per pound is meat price. Doesn’t count bone. But two hundred thousand dollars is really good money. So you can see why most humans run cattle.”
“I can see it. I don’t have to like it,” Great Bess said.
“Even if reducing dependence on beef meant some cattle would live as companions to humans, herds would be drastically reduced or phased out altogether. Vegetarian ways could mean the extinction of some breeds,” the cat said.
“Sneaky Pie, I’ll be long gone by then, and so will you,” Great Bess bellowed. “Give up this idea. Let humans steal, rape, kill one another. We can’t do a thing about it.”
“I think I can. They are deeply irrational. They need reasoned leadership.”
“Hormones. They’re brainless, really.” Addie noticed the Great Blue Heron, the daddy, flying overhead. “He gets taller every year.”
Great Bess looked up, too. “When he stands and stretches his neck all the way up, I bet he’s six feet tall. Skinny, though. Well, herons are. Back to hormones. Addie is right. Scrambles their brains. We only have that problem about twice a year. They are demented around the clock.”
Tally piped up from where she was sitting on the soft grass. “Is this what our Can Opener calls testosterone poisoning?”
“Rat dog, I don’t think estrogen is any better.” Great Bess let out a belching laugh.
“You’ve got a point there, Great Bess,” Sneaky said. “They’re just a hot mess, but they’re clever. They use what brains they have to justify all their irrational behavior. Well, I’ve taken up a lot of your time. I appreciate you hearing me out.”
“Pussycat, you are a decent sort. You’ve always been polite to us. Give up this crazy idea. You can’t save anybody or anything, including us. Fate, you know.”
“Great Bess, I aim to make my own Fate.”
As the two animals walked away, Great Bess turned to Addie. “Not wise to tempt Fate, you know.”
Up at the house, Pewter was tempting the C.O., who was scrambling eggs.
Tucker slept under the table.
“Come on, put one out for me,” cried Pewter. “Fresh eggs are the best, like candy.”
“If you put your paw on this bowl one more time I’m getting the squirt gun,” the human threatened.
The squirt gun rested on the kitchen sink.
“That’s low, really low. I need protein. Selfish.”
The Can Opener did put the two eggshells on the counter for the cat to lick.
The back door, wide open to catch the breeze, afforded a majestic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The less majestic view was of Sneaky Pie and Tally running this way and that for all they were worth while a flock of enraged cowbirds dive-bombed them from above.
“We are not no-counts,” one shrieked.
“Laying an egg here and there in another nest is good policy,” another squealed while executing an impressive threatening swoop.
“Cheap bastards.” Tally snarled as she ran.
“You have offended every cowbird in this state, in the nation!” the original cowbird, who laid the egg in the Yellow Warbler nest, warned. She plunged toward the cat’s head at a forty-five-degree angle.
The racket brought Pewter, Tally, and the C.O. to the door.
Tally barked furiously while Pewter ran out, leapt up, grabbed a diving cowbird, and broke its neck. “Ha! Kill and eat your enemies.”
The flock, however, was thick enough that Pewter didn’t have a chance to even pull off one feather. The three animals bolted into the house to avoid the human, now armed with a broom.
The C.O. leaned the broom up against the door. “That was dramatic.”
The human knelt next to Tally: no damage was done, but the Jack Russell had suffered a direct poop hit. A wet rag took care of that indignity.
“Well, Tally, now I can say you are full of poop.” Tucker laughed.
Tally did not.
Pewter stated the obvious to Sneaky Pie: “I don’t think you can count cowbirds among your supporters.”
“I didn’t think there were that many on the farm.” Sneaky took a deep breath.
“Oh, there aren’t. She went out and sold her tale of woe,” Tally replied. “She blathered on about being insulted. The cowbird insult story is probably making the rounds in Maryland and North Carolina by now. Tomorrow it will have reached even farther north and south. Cowbirds have big mouths.”
“Guess so.” The tiger, chastened, sat down, then smelled the eggs. “I knew you didn’t come down with us for a reason. Breakfast.”
“I get tired of canned food and crunchies,” said Pewter. “I like what she eats.”
“Pewter, you’ll eat anything,” said Tally. “You’ll eat greens with fatback.” The little dog acted superior, a joke, given her indiscriminate appetite even if a bit hungry—which was always.
“It’s the fatback, soaks through all those collard greens. Yum.”
The dog wrinkled her nose. “Pewter, greens are disgusting.”
Sneaky observed the two eggshells on the counter. “Did you get two eggs?”
“Nah, just the shells.”
“You know, if the wrong people get in the White House, eggs will be off-limits.”
“Huh?” Pewter raised her eyebrows.
“Unborn chickens,” the tiger cat declared.
Back to the Land
The lightning bugs, pinpoint divas, had yet to make their seasonal debut. The cats, dogs, and human loved that first night when darting dots, ice yellow and pale green, filled the meadows. While the beguiling insects were eagerly awaited, a mid-May night offered many consolations. Twilight lingered, then night finally came, and with it that dampness peculiar to the night air, fragrances made more potent because of it.
Central Virginia’s springs exceeded the expectations of even those who had lived in this area all their lives. While the area’s fall could disappoint, with little color or a high wind taking away the red, gold, and orange leaves, spring lasted about two full months, with glorious colors, aromas, and giddiness. As the redbuds hit full blossom, an early-blooming dogwood might swell to a big, white bud, light green at the base of the unopened petals. And even with a tight bud, one could see a flaming azalea’s promise. Daffodils, jonquils, tulips, all of them overlapping—some early, some right on time, some late—covered the earth like a holiday carpet.
Sneaky Pie and Pewter sat to the right of their human as she fiddled with the computer on her desk in the study. The sweet smell of late-blooming lilacs and early-blooming roses swept into the room.
Being rural and off the grid, the human used an nTelos air card, which worked pretty good. The cats could use the computer and didn’t hesitate to do so when the C.O. turned it off or left the room. If she folded up her computer, they couldn’t open it. But usually she left it open, and the clever cats could use it with ease.
With Sneaky Pie looking at the screen from the side, the C.O. was reading information from Open Source Ecology, a fascinating group that sought to lower the barriers to entering farming, building, even manufacturing. While their farm’s human was born and raised among agriculture, Sneaky Pie realized most Americans were not. Indeed, the average age of a farmer in America was fifty-seven. In Virginia it was fifty-five. Successfully escaping urban life, a dream for many downtrodden city dwellers, might be even more possible if they had the right information before leaving the concrete canyons. It would be good to get young humans farming.
On the floor the two dogs resented the cats’ ability to sit next to the computer.
“What’s she reading?” Tally wagged her little tail in anticipation.
“She’s looking at the design for a walk-behind tractor,” Sneaky called down. “Before that, she read about this group setting up headquarters in rural Missouri.”
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��Far away,” Tee Tucker commented.
“West of the Mississippi, but the soil’s good—you know how excited she gets about soil.” Pewter had no fondness for digging—which the dogs did, of course.
“Better than here?” Tally inquired.
“Since a lot of what we have is red clay, yes,” Sneaky replied. “Although we can make bricks with the best of them. A few days ago she was looking on this site at a design for an earth brick press. This OSE is amazing.”
“She’s not going to make bricks, is she?” The corgi got fatigued by her human’s endless ideas and projects.
“No. She’s just curious.” Pewter watched as the design came closer, a portion of it enlarged. “I like this stuff, but it’s hard on the eyes.”
“Harder on ours than hers. Our eyes are better, so we can see the little pulsations. They really can’t, but you know these computers emit radiation?” Sneaky had her doubts about much of technology.
“Good. You’ll glow in the dark.” Tee Tucker chuckled.
“Shut up,” Sneaky replied. “Back to clay. Right here on our farm, we have different soils. It’s red clay on the higher elevations and really good soil down by the river. Well, it’s a creek at this point, but miles away it becomes a river.”
“Better for scent,” Tally said solemnly. “I can lose rabbit scent quickly on the clay, but down by the river it holds. Chasing rabbits is very healthy, you know. If humans would do it, they’d have better wind and they wouldn’t get so fat.”
“Sitting on their ass for eight hours a day or more is going to make anyone fat. No way out,” Pewter declared.
Tally giggled. “You should know.”
“Asshole.”
“Such pretty talk.” Tally responded by baring her teeth.
“Imagine if our Can Opener knew what you were saying.”
“If she knew what I was saying, she’d agree with me. You’re trouble. You’ve always been trouble, and you always will be trouble. Your brain is no bigger than a gnat’s.”
Sneaky Pie for President Page 4