by Chris Kurtz
Mona hums a tune while she packs. Glory makes bird sounds and swings upside down when her cage gets loaded in the backseat. Hector scratches his back on the wire sides of his cage and says, “Mmm, mmm,” over and over. Everyone is in a good mood for a little family time … or could it be that we’re all just glad to be escaping a certain someone?
On the road, Mona cracks the window for me even though it’s against the rules. My feet go up on the armrest. Ahh, the wind in the ears. Ahh, the wild smells. I sniff. I breathe deeply. Ulp. I almost choke.
Glory stops twittering. Mona plugs her nose. “Lobo, was that you?”
I drop down to the seat and lick the sides of my mouth to try and wipe the taste off my tongue. I know what Mona is thinking, and I am shocked that she suspects me.
“Smells exactly like … air of dog,” says Hector, “and I don’t want to say which end it came from.”
Glory giggles.
“It wasn’t me,” I say. It really wasn’t. The problem is, no one believes me because that’s the same thing I say when it really is me.
Mona keeps her nose plugged. “It’s getting worse and it’s coming from outside.” She rolls up the windows. For once I’m glad.
“Ha.” I turn to face Hector. “Told you it wasn’t me.”
The sign says BUBBLING PAINT POTS. Apparently, it’s some “natural wonder” people like to see, because Mona stops to take a look. There are bubbles. But not like bath bubbles. These are mud bubbles that expand like brown balloons out of the ground and then pop and splatter mud in all directions. Hot, bubbling mud from the middle of the earth, and crowds of people. Everyone with any sense, and two fingers, is holding their nose.
Not an animal in sight … except for the poor critters on leashes like me who can’t hold our noses. No animal would want to be anywhere near this place. Now, if you were a dirty sock, you would feel like you were in a heaven where all dirty socks end up. But this was no place for anyone with lungs. We hustle out of there.
“Let’s go see a lake,” says Mona. Great, I think. Cool, fresh breezes. Children splashing on the shore. Mona turns off the road and I get a bad feeling when I see the sign. SOUR LAKE. Swimming, anyone? No thanks. The next sign is worse. DANGER! BOILING WATER. UNSTABLE GROUND. And if that sign isn’t enough to make you drive away, just look at all the trees around the edge of Sour Lake. Dead. And if the boiling water didn’t kill the trees, I think it might have been the smell. Mona drives away.
I’m a lot happier when we are speeding away from the stink and out to the meadows of long grass. The window comes down again. Out here it smells like … I sniff again … grass. Weird.
And there’s another smell. A wild smell.
My wolf senses go on high alert. “Something is out there,” I say. I get so excited, my front feet start to prance on the armrest. I make them stop because I’m pretty sure wolves don’t prance. “Something dangerous with sharp teeth.” Only an animal with a howl in his heart can possibly know this. “Could be wolves!”
“Horns,” says Hector.
Horns? How can he be so sure? I sniff again. “Claws,” I say. “Definitely something with sharp, dangerous claws.”
“Hooves,” says Hector.
He sounds very sure of himself and I have a bad feeling about this. I might have let my excitement get ahead of my nose in this one case only. But I don’t want to lose. I look back at Hector. He is stretching up as tall as his little rat self can stretch and sniffing like crazy.
Then I notice that with his cage sitting on the backseat, the windows are too high for him to see out.
I look ahead. “I’ll let you know what it is when I see it.”
Mona slows down. There is something in the meadow. Long thin legs. Horns. It is eating grass.
I’m pretty disappointed with myself, but I act confident. “Ooh, ouch,” I say. “Nice try back there, mousie. It’s a bear.”
Hector starts sniffing like crazy. His nose is twitching, and he gets on his hind feet and goes from one end of his cage to the other trying to catch the scent. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“Big, brown, and bearish,” I lie. “Teeth as long as scissors.”
Hector gets back down on all fours and bangs his head against the wire of his cage. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Hey, look.” Mona points. “There’s a deer.”
“A deer!” Hector stops banging and looks at me. His eyes squint. “You said it was a bear.”
I look back out the window. “Oh that,” I say. “Yeah, that’s a deer. I was talking about the bear right … oops, it just stepped out of sight.”
Hector stomps around his cage and then grabs the wire bars. “Bring your bony little leg over here,” he growls. “I want to show you something.”
I don’t move. He bites the wires with his yellow teeth. I think I would rather face a bear than Hector right now. I look away.
A wood chip comes flying out of Hector’s cage and zings me on the ear. I probably deserved that.
11
Even Top Predators Have to Say Sorry Sometimes
“Yellowstone’s greatest prize is coming up!” Mona sounds excited.
I look back at Hector. He squints his eyes at me again and sticks out his tongue. Hector is still mad.
I jump to put my feet up on the armrest of the door so I can look out the window. I wag my tail. But inside, my tail is dragging. I know I’m the reason for Hector’s bad mood, and for once I feel like it’s my fault.
I jump into the backseat. “Hey, Heckles,” I say. “There’s a big attraction coming up.”
Hector’s tongue goes back in his mouth, but his eyes get even squintier. “That was not a cool move back there,” he says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “I’m pretty sure there was a bear right behind the …”
I look at Glory. She is staring at me and she shakes her head.
“Whatever,” I say. “You’re just a big grump.”
I look out the window. From down here on the backseat where Hector has to stay, there isn’t much to see. The tops of trees go floating past now and then, but it’s mostly all clouds and sky. I look at Hector. He has his eyes closed but I don’t think he’s sleeping.
Mona pulls off the road. There is another sign. The big attraction turns out to be a geyser called Old Faithful. I have no idea what a geyser is. Mona pulls her car into the parking lot and stops near a tree. She’s all in a rush, as if she’s going to miss something if she doesn’t hurry. She runs to find an open bench in the crowd and then comes back for us.
One by one she grabs Hector and then Glory in their cages and sets them down on the bench. Then she runs back to clip me to my leash and we join the others. Mona is breathing hard as she sits next to Glory.
“This is so exciting!” says Mona.
Cars come in and out of the parking lot. Families push strollers along the path. A clump of people stands around a little ways off. I’m not sure what I’m missing. I’ve watched a bug crawl along the edge of a leaf, and it was more exciting than this. Then all of a sudden, whoosh. A great stream of water pounds up out of the ground.
Mona claps her hands. Glory flaps her wings and crows like a rooster. The water shoots up as high as a tree and then drifts off at the top like a feather. I can’t take my eyes off it for a minute, but then I look away. Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed and I’ll tell you why.
I never knew this, but now it’s clear that even the land needs to pee sometimes. It happens to all of us, and I suppose it’s no different for the land of Yellowstone.
But when I need to go, I don’t like people staring at me. It makes me uncomfortable and, to tell the truth, it also makes it harder to go. There’s a part of me that just locks up, and there I am with my leg in the air and nothing coming out.
So that’s why I look away. Sure, I’m impressed. That’s a lot of water. And I want to look. It just doesn’t seem very polite.
“That was worth t
he whole trip to Yellowstone!” Back in the car, Mona has the volume turned up on her jazzy music and is making a drum out of her steering wheel. “Wasn’t that just so amazing?” She reaches over and scratches her favorite dog behind the ears. Mmm, nice.
I’m thinking that a nice scratching session could be amazing, but Mona is driving, so the scratching doesn’t last very long. That’s okay. I have something else on my mind. I go back to check on a certain white rat. “Did you think that was amazing, Heckles?”
He is chewing on a piece of cardboard and he looks at me, but he doesn’t answer.
“Pretty cool, huh? All that gushing water soaring up to the sky like a giant rat tail?” I think I’m clever to say that part about the rat tail. Hector doesn’t look so impressed. He sticks out his tongue and then digs himself under a lump of sawdust. I get the message that I haven’t been forgiven.
“I’m sorry, Heckles,” I say to the lump. There’s no answer. I can tell I’m going to have to work at this before we can be friends again.
When we pull into camp, guess who rushes out to meet us? Alexandra hardly waits for the car to stop. I’m in the front seat, but she unlatches the back door this time. “Aunt Mona, you were gone forever. Can I play with Hector? I’m gonna be Cinderella and I need a rat coachman.”
All of a sudden I know just what I can do to show Hector that I’m a good friend. I know I’m going to be in deep trouble for this, but I’ve made up my mind. I jump in the backseat and I bark like crazy. I bark my head off.
Alexandra jumps back. That’s the good part.
Mona yells at me. That’s the bad part. “Lobo, no! Lobo, stop that.” I knew she was going to yell at me. I knew my barking was going to disappoint her. Still, I have to do it. I bark some more, until Mona finally grabs my collar.
“Alexandra, honey, it’s been a long day in the car for me and my family.” Mona picks me up and gets out of the car. “Lobo is obviously grouchy and probably Hector is too. Maybe you’d better wait and play Cinderella another time.”
Mona walks to the motor home. “For now I know that there is one cranky little fellow who has just earned himself a time-out.” Mona steps up into the motor home and clips my leash to the armrest of a chair.
She talks more softly now, but her words cut deep. “I’m so disappointed in you, Lobo,” she says. “You know you can’t act like that with my niece. I hope you feel bad.”
The door closes and it’s just me. Alone. In time-out. And I do feel bad. I always feel bad when Mona is disappointed in me, even if it’s not very wolfish of me.
But there’s a tiny part of me that doesn’t feel bad. I had to show Hector that I really meant it when I said I was sorry.
Later the door opens. Mona unclips me, picks me up, and cuddles me like she always does after time-out. Ooh, that feels good. She even forgets to clip me back up to my leash. On the way to the campfire, I see Hector in his cage on a little rug, but I can’t catch his eye to see if we’re friends yet.
Then comes the part when I have to make it up to Alexandra. Yuck. But I do what Mona wants. Mona holds me while I let Alexandra pet my head. I act all nice, and as a reward I get a beautiful necklace. Actually, it is a piece of yellow yarn with loops in it.
“You may wear the princess’s golden chain.” Alexandra ties it around my neck. I can tell that Mona thinks this is cute. I think it’s going to get in my way. At least Mona makes sure it isn’t tied too tightly. Then Alexandra goes to sit on her mother’s lap.
Mona sits by the campfire with me on her lap, and we watch the sun go down. She pets me. She runs her fingers through my hair. She picks off the little eye boogers that end up all crusty and gross on my cheek. It feels so good.
There is a sleepy feeling going around the group. Then somebody mentions s’mores, and all of a sudden I get dropped on the ground.
I hate s’mores. They taste terrible, and they break apart and get all over the fingers of the people who love them. Then the fingers touch you and before you know it, the sticky goo is all over your fur.
Mona is crazy about them. So are Alexandra and her parents and her grandparents. For that matter, probably even Glory and Hector love s’mores.
That gives me an idea. Hector has got to love them. He loves everything sticky and gooey and crunchy. I prowl under the chairs. No one is watching. I sneak around and look for my chance, and then it happens. Just like they always do, someone drops a big chunk of s’more.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, but before anyone can step on the s’more and make it even worse, I pick it up in my teeth. Yeegh! It’s so gummy and sweet and covered with pine needles that I can hardly breathe while I take it over to Hector’s cage. Plus I step on the princess’s golden chain with every other step. But when I get there, Hector is drooling from the smell.
“I figured you wouldn’t want to be left out.” I drop it and use my tongue to feel around. Sure enough. Melted marshmallow all over my whiskers.
“Push it over here, closer.” Hector’s little hands are stretching for it, but they can’t quite reach. I nose it closer and get melted marshmallow on my nose.
Hector grabs the treat and hurries it into a corner of his cage. He’s about to take a bite, but then he stops and looks at me.
“Um … thanks,” he says.
“I’m sorry about tricking you in the car today,” I say.
A drop of drool drips out of his mouth, but Hector puts his nose up to the wire of his cage. “Thanks for getting Alexandra to leave me alone in the car. I hope time-out wasn’t too bad.”
I shake my head.
Then he notices my new jewelry. “What’s that around your neck? Some kind of new punishment?”
“No,” I say. “Reward. I get to wear the princess’s golden necklace for mending my bad ways.”
“Nice,” he says.
“No hard feelings?” I say.
“No hard feelings. Bump me.” Hector sticks out his knuckles and we bump. “Mind if I dig in?” he says.
“Just don’t save any for me,” I say. “I hate that stuff.”
Hector takes a big bite. Brown and white slime squishes out of the corners of his mouth. “Mmph or ghrassier glurb ah erff.”
Yeah, that makes sense. I walk away because I don’t want to watch that mess. Plus, I have to lick off the goo from my nose and whiskers. When I’m clean, I jump back into Mona’s lap and she lets me stay. I curl up. Sleep is going to feel excellent.
Just then I remember that for the first time since we got to Yellowstone, I don’t have my leash on, and I forgot to make a break for it and find my pack. Oh well. I’m too tired tonight anyway, and I’m sure I will get my chance tomorrow.
Yes, I’ll make my move tomorrow for sure.
12
Freedom!
Two hands wake me up. Mona isn’t usually such an early riser. She must need to take an early morning walk to sniff that fresh air. It sounds good to me. A good start to the day will help me forget the problems of yesterday. Good old Mona.
Then I get lifted up so that my legs are dangling. Have I mentioned how much wolf brothers hate having their legs dangled in the air? I struggle a little to remind Mona to hold me the way I like.
I look up. It isn’t Mona. It’s Alexandra again.
Never mind struggling. I consider a good sharp bite to just one of those little fingers. It would do so much good, but I remember what Glory said about family. I’m about to bark and let someone know I’m being kidnapped when Alexandra begins to speak.
“Are you lonely too?” she whispers.
Me? I look around for another human.
“Are you cold?”
I might be trembling a bit. But I’m not cold.
“Hector and Glory are cold too. And lonely.”
They are? I have never heard of being lonely before breakfast. As I’m trying to figure out what this means, Alexandra unlatches Hector’s cage, unhooks my chain, and puts me inside.
Imagine this. I have come to Yellowstone Park
with the notion that I might be able to taste a bit of freedom. Instead I am being shoved into a cage that would make a prairie dog feel cramped.
My sleepiness drops away the minute my feet touch Hector’s sawdust. Wet.
Glory is here too, and it doesn’t look like she’s enjoying the experience any more than I am.
She looks at me and I don’t have to ask what she’s thinking. Just wait it out and it will be over sooner or later.
I tiptoe around trying to find a dry spot. But the little guy has made a mess of the place everywhere. I try to convince myself that Hector has somehow managed to spill his water. But the smell lets me know the truth of the matter, and the disgusting little black peanut things lying around are … not peanuts.
I try to keep my nose closed and breathe through my mouth.
Hector opens his eyes. He looks as if he can’t quite figure out where he is.
Alexandra’s face is pushed up close to the wire. If she could fit, I think she would crawl in with us.
Just then I hear footsteps coming from the back of the motor home. That’s a good sign. Mona will put us back where we belong.
Alexandra hears it too.
“Uh-oh,” she whispers. “Somebody’s coming. We better get you outside before you get in trouble.”
Me get in trouble? What did I do?
She picks up the cage, and the whole thing bucks and heaves while she stands up. “Earthquake,” Hector moans. “Keep to the high ground.”
I don’t understand why this is important until I find myself at the bottom of the heap with a rat’s foot in my ear and my face smashed into wet sawdust.
We all lurch and sway and knock into each other.
Even with a rat’s foot in my ear, my sensitive hearing can pick up sounds. I hear Alexandra unlatch the door of the motor home. She’s making a clean getaway with her stolen treasure. Meanwhile, the treasure is getting airsick.