by Tom Watson
“I’m sorry you can’t get up in a tree, Poo-Poo,” Stick Dog said seriously. “I’m sure—heck, I’m positive—that if you did, you would prove yourself against a squirrel.”
“You bet I would.”
“But for now, let’s keep moving toward that—”
Smash-CLANG!!
The sound was close.
Really close.
Its loudness and proximity startled all five dogs.
“It’s this way!” yelled Stripes.
“Let’s go!!” screamed Poo-Poo.
And that’s exactly what they did.
Chapter 4
PERCHING AND SWOOPING
Stick Dog and his four friends passed through a clump of about a dozen apple trees and emerged from the forest. Along the edge of the woods ran a long, straight blacktop road. Directly across the road there were several more apple trees.
Stick Dog immediately noticed two peculiar, unfamiliar things as he scanned their surroundings. The first was an odd building about a mile down the road. It had two large, spinning objects on its roof. One was a giant cup, which had the word “Dizzy’s” on it. Stick Dog figured it was dizzy because it was spinning on the roof so much. The other huge, rotating object was even stranger. It was a hollow circle—like a giant truck tire and painted pink. It had the word “Donuts” on it. Stick Dog had never heard that word before.
The second weird thing Stick Dog noticed was much closer. Parked on the other side of the road by a tall telephone pole was a large, odd-looking truck. It had a long, jointed crane that stretched high in the air.
A human in a yellow hard hat was near the top of the pole, standing on a small platform. He worked on a metallic box with black wires running in and out of it. The man had thick, muscular arms. He wore overalls, big brown work boots, and a faded-yellow T-shirt.
The dogs stood completely still behind a big, fallen tree branch. They were well hidden among its brown leaves and twigs. They had never seen this kind of truck before. And they had certainly never seen a man at the top of a telephone pole before.
“What in the world is that man doing up there, Stick Dog?” Poo-Poo asked in wonder.
Before Stick Dog could answer, Karen provided an explanation. “He’s perched,” she began to explain. “I see birds up on poles and wires like that all the time. They wait for a small animal like a mouse to come out, then they swoop down and snatch it and eat it. That’s what he’s doing up there. He’s waiting to see something scamper around on the ground to eat.”
“That makes sense,” Mutt said.
“I see,” said Stripes.
Poo-Poo nodded along as well.
“So, umm—” Stick Dog said, and stopped. He tried to think of a polite way to say something. “You think he’s going to jump down and—”
“Swoop down,” Karen corrected.
“Right, swoop down,” said Stick Dog. “You think he’s going to swoop down from all the way up there to get a mouse to eat?”
“Oh, Stick Dog, Stick Dog,” Karen said, and shook her head in a sad kind of way. “Humans don’t eat mouses, Stick Dog.”
“Mice,” corrected Stick Dog.
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Karen answered. “They don’t eat mice. He’s waiting for human food to swoop down on.”
“Human food?” asked Stick Dog.
“That’s right.” Karen seemed very sure of herself. “You know: hamburgers, frankfurters, pizza, ice cream—that kind of thing.”
At the mention of all these foods, which the dogs had tasted before, their stomachs began to gurgle and grumble. They began to salivate and drool at the tasty memories.
Stick Dog watched the man high in the air. While he did, he asked, “Karen, when the birds are perched and the mice come out, where do they come out from?”
“Little holes in the ground, of course,” Karen whispered. She was still drooling and remembering.
“And when humans are perched up there, where do the frankfurters, pizza, ice cream, and hamburgers come from?”
Karen stopped drooling. She wiped her lips. “Stick Dog,” she said seriously. “I’m not a hamburger. Or a pizza. Or a frankfurter. Or an ice cream. I don’t know where they come from.”
Stick Dog asked, “And doesn’t the human need wings to swoop?”
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t he too heavy?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How do humans get up to the top? Not everybody has a truck like this guy.”
“No idea.”
Karen then looked at Mutt, Poo-Poo, and Stripes and sort of raised her left eyebrow in Stick Dog’s direction a couple of times. Her mouth was pulled up on one side, and her eyes darted back and forth between Stick Dog and the others.
“Stick Dog,” she said with that smirk on her face. “You really seem to be a little too caught up in the details of this whole thing.”
Stick Dog might have continued to quiz Karen, but their stomach grumblings were too loud to ignore.
Mutt said what everybody was now thinking. “All this talk about hamburgers and pizza and stuff has made me more hungry. And those darn apples up there are taunting me! We have got to go find some food!”
“But shouldn’t we wait here for the human food to emerge?” asked Stick Dog. He smiled a bit to himself. “Then we can race in and try to get it before the human swoops down.”
“We’re hungry NOW, Stick Dog!” Poo-Poo exclaimed. “We can’t wait for that!”
Stick Dog smiled again. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
And they probably would have left right then.
But they didn’t.
Do you know why?
I’ll tell you.
It’s because right then the man stepped off the platform and into a basket at the end of the truck’s mechanical arm. He began to descend from high in the air.
“What’s happening?!” yelped Stripes.
“He’s swooping!” Karen said immediately.
Chapter 5
THE SCENT OF STRAWBERRIES
Stick Dog watched as the big man used his hands on a joystick inside the narrow basket at the end of the crane. A motor whirred to life. Stick Dog couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the man controlled the speed and direction of his descent with the joystick.
When Karen saw the man come down, she instantly began to scan the ground for pizza, frankfurters, and other human food.
She didn’t see any—much to her own surprise.
Stick Dog saw the disappointment on her face. “He’s probably coming down for something else,” he said to Karen. “Maybe he’ll swoop for food later.”
This made Karen feel better.
The huge mechanical arm reached the ground, and the man stepped out of the basket. He came to the back of the truck where the dogs could easily see him.
The man opened a large, metal toolbox, tossed in a heavy screwdriver, and let the lid slam shut. It sounded like this: Bash-Clang!
“That’s the sound we heard,” Stripes said.
Stick Dog nodded.
“Now that we’ve identified the sound, Stick Dog, can we please go on a food search?” asked Mutt.
“Yeah, Stick Dog!” Karen chimed in. So did Poo-Poo and Stripes.
Stick Dog listened to his friends’ request while he watched the man at the back of his truck. Now that he had put some tools away, the man did something else.
“Stick Dog?” asked Mutt.
“Just a minute, please,” Stick Dog replied. He was disappointed that their investigation had not turned into a longer adventure—a better distraction—for his friends. He had wanted to take their minds off food—well, their lack of food—for a while. Instead, Karen’s misguided and ridiculous theory that the man would swoop down from the telephone pole and snatch nonexistent hamburgers, pizza, frankfurters, and ice cream from the ground had actually done the opposite thing: they were thinking about food even more than before. They were hungrier than ever.
�
�Can we go now?” Karen asked.
“Shh.” He knew they were starving. But there was a reason why he wanted to observe this man at the back of his truck a little longer. Stick Dog’s instincts were kicking in.
“Are you even listening to us?” Stripes asked.
“Shh,” Stick Dog requested again politely. Then the man reached his hand into a box and pulled out a light-brown ball. It didn’t appear to be a tool. It was round and sort of flat. It fit perfectly into his hand. The man didn’t bounce it or toss it up in the air as Stick Dog suspected he would. He did something totally surprising.
The man took that ball and brought it to his mouth.
And he took a bite out of it.
Stick Dog couldn’t believe his eyes. He stared at the man as he chewed and swallowed that first bite. He had a very happy and satisfied look on his face. His mouth was turned up in a small grin, his eyelids drooped a little, and he nodded his head.
The man at the truck took a second bite. When he did, Stick Dog saw that the ball had a red liquid center. It was very peculiar, and Stick Dog took a sniff of the air in the man’s direction. Oddly, Stick Dog picked up the scent of strawberries even though he knew they were out of season. They’d picked their last wild strawberry more than a month ago.
Some of that red juice—it actually looked thicker than juice—was on the man’s lower lip. Stick Dog watched as he used his index finger to wipe it off. Then the man licked his finger, smiled, and finished eating the thing.
Stick Dog stopped watching when Poo-Poo spoke.
“Let’s go already!” Poo-Poo insisted. “We need to find food!”
Stick Dog turned to his friends and smiled. He looked at each of them one at a time, meeting their eyes with a determined gaze. All he said was, “We already have.”
Poo-Poo asked, “Where?”
“There,” Stick Dog said, and pointed toward the man.
The man took a jacket that hung from a corner of the truck and tossed it into the back. The sun was bright and warm and Stick Dog figured the man wouldn’t need it. As it fell, the jacket captured some air under it like a parachute and fluttered down softly to its landing. Then the man stretched his arms over his head and gave his shoulders a quick shake.
“He’s not eating, Stick Dog. There’s no food,” Poo-Poo said. “I think he’s dancing. He’s not a very good dancer. I mean, that guy’s got no moves at all.”
“He’s waking up,” Stick Dog answered, and watched some more. “And you’re right. He’s not eating just this second. But watch.”
As if on Stick Dog’s cue, the man reached into the box and took out a second object. This one was totally different from the first. It didn’t have a red liquid center. In fact, it didn’t have a center at all. Stick Dog was very curious about it. It was covered in pink paint or goo or something. It had small colored specks all over it too. It looked, Stick Dog now realized, like a much smaller version of the huge truck tire thing that spun around on the roof of that building down the road.
The worker opened his mouth and took a huge bite of it, licking some of the pink stuff from his lips.
“That’s definitely food!” whispered Stick Dog.
Chapter 6
THE DONUT DISCOVERY
“You don’t know that it’s food for sure,” Poo-Poo said.
“Yeah, Stick Dog,” Stripes added immediately after. “It might not be.”
“It could be anything else,” Mutt concurred.
Karen was too busy to join in the conversation. She had discovered an itch when she rubbed her belly on the ground, and it now demanded her full attention. It appeared to be super-difficult for her to get at the itch. As you know, she has really short legs, and this makes reaching things—even itches—frustrating for her.
“Of course it’s food,” Stick Dog said. “He’s taking bites of those things—whatever they are. And then he’s chewing. See his mouth shift around? See his jaw move up and down? And look: you can even see his neck bump in and out when he swallows. He’s eating. He’s eating food.”
“I think that first thing was a deflated ball, Stick Dog. The second thing is a small pink Frisbee. Not food,” Poo-Poo said, sounding doubtful. “Balls and Frisbees aren’t for eating. They’re for fetching.”
“I thought that first one was a ball too,” said Stick Dog. “But when—”
“Excuse me, Poo-Poo,” Mutt said before Stick Dog could finish. He rarely interrupted anyone, but this time he seemed to have a rather important point to make. “But I’ve eaten several balls and Frisbees myself. I’m kind of an expert on the subject.”
Stripes didn’t seem very convinced. “I don’t think that means they’re food, Mutt.”
“I don’t think those things are balls or Frisbees anyway,” Stick Dog interjected. “And that’s not really the issue here. We may have found a new food source. It’s certainly worth trying to figure out.”
But nobody paid him any attention. Stripes, Mutt, and Poo-Poo had become instantly obsessed with whether rubbery things like balls and Frisbees could be defined as food. And Karen had not satisfied her itch yet. She had moved a few feet to her left to find a rougher patch of ground with twigs and dry leaves. She hoped this new area would offer greater scratching capability.
“I know you eat plastic things and rubber things, Mutt,” Poo-Poo said. “I just don’t know if they qualify as food.”
“Some of them can be quite satisfying, let me tell you,” Mutt said quickly. “I’ve consumed a couple of Frisbees, for instance. I just start chewing on the edges, you know? I love chewing. It passes the time so wonderfully. It’s got a nice rhythm to it. You know what I mean?”
“Umm, sort of,” Stripes said. She’d never eaten any plastic or rubber objects herself. It didn’t seem like a very appetizing idea to her, but she didn’t want to be rude. “I guess.”
“Well, chewing just has such a soothing tempo to it,” Mutt continued to explain. “I sort of go into a trance. My eyelids get real heavy and sleepy. And then before I even know how much time has gone by, I look down, and there’s no more Frisbee or ball or whatever left. It’s disappeared! Because I ate it! That’s why I think balls and Frisbees can truly be called food.”
Stripes nodded. She seemed to have come around to Mutt’s way of thinking.
Stick Dog, meanwhile, continued to observe the big worker in the hard hat. The man had just finished eating the pink circle and closed the lid to the box. Most important, Stick Dog suspected there might be more of those edible objects in the box. And the box itself sat on the back bumper of the truck.
The man then lifted an enormous Styrofoam cup and removed its lid. The cup said “Dizzy’s Big GULP Coffee” on it. When he took the lid off, a cloud of steam escaped from inside the cup. The worker blew into the cup and took a long, slow sip.
His face showed great satisfaction after this—as if that drink was something he had waited for all morning. His lips tightened. He smiled a bit and nodded his head at the cup like he was saying thank you to it or something.
Stick Dog watched him carefully.
Karen scratched her belly.
But Poo-Poo, after considering Mutt’s argument, still was not convinced that rubber things were food. “I don’t think you can call something like a Frisbee food. Food has to have flavor. I think that’s really important.”
“Hey,” Mutt said. He seemed slightly taken aback. “I’ve had a couple of delicious Frisbees, Poo-Poo. It’s an acquired taste, I’ll grant you that. But they do have flavor.”
Poo-Poo said, “I just don’t think it’s food. It’s not food food. It’s just something you eat.”
Upon hearing this, Mutt defended his position. “No, no. If you eat it, it’s food. The eating part is the deciding factor.”
This made Stripes rejoin the conversation. “So when it’s a ball at Picasso Park, then it’s just a ball. But when you retrieve the ball and begin chewing on it, that’s when it becomes food? Is that what you’re saying?”
> Mutt shook his head. “Not quite,” he explained. “I think during the delightful biting-and-chewing experience, it’s still a ball. Only when actual swallowing takes place does it become food.”
“So when the chewed-up piece of ball moves from your mouth to your stomach, it mutates into food?” asked Stripes.
“Something like that,” Mutt answered. He seemed to appreciate that Stripes was trying to understand. “I think it’s more like a transformation. It’s a little more magical—a little more mystical.”
Stripes seemed to buy into this concept. She nodded along as Mutt spoke.
Karen now stood up. She had scratched her belly itch away successfully. The dry twigs on the ground had helped.
Stick Dog watched as the man put the huge cup down. He reached into his toolbox again. He removed a large pair of pliers and an abnormally big pair of scissors.
“Okay, then,” Poo-Poo said. He wanted to make one last point. There was an air of confidence about him. He looked suddenly satisfied at coming up with a foolproof argument. “What about when you’re chewing and swallowing at the same time? Sometimes you’re swallowing one bunch of food while there’s still another bunch in your mouth. It can’t be a ball and food at the same time! That’s impossible. I think I’ve proven my point. So there!”
Mutt seemed surprised at this turn of the conversation. It was a good point—and he knew it. He was puzzled by it—but only for a few seconds. Then he simply said, “That’s the mystical part.”
This would have likely gone on for some time, but just then a sudden loud noise rang out.
CLANG!
The man had tossed a ball-peen hammer into his box.
This grabbed all of their attention at once—well, all of their attention except Stick Dog’s. He was already watching while the others debated the definition of “food” and Karen scratched her belly.