by Tom Watson
They devoured their first donuts quickly. They bit and chewed and swallowed—and smiled—the whole time. When they started in on their second donuts, however, Poo-Poo suddenly stopped eating.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
“S-Stick D-D-Dog?” Poo-Poo asked. It was clear just from his voice that something troubled him greatly.
“Yes?” answered Stick Dog as he stepped closer. He had finished his one donut and was now simply watching the others enjoy their second courses. “What is it, Poo-Poo?”
“M-M-My d-donut.”
“What about it?”
“I th-think I k-killed it.”
This was such a startling statement that Stripes, Mutt, and Karen stopped eating and raised their heads to see what was happening.
“What do you mean?” asked Stick Dog.
“Look at it,” Poo-Poo said, and pointed to his donut on the ground. “It’s bleeding.”
This comment brought Karen, Mutt, and Stripes closer to examine the donut. Stick Dog was about to explain the red liquid center to Poo-Poo, but he decided to wait just a moment before doing so. He wanted to listen to the others for a few seconds.
“It’s bleeding, all right,” Stripes said, and looked at the dripping red liquid emerging from the donut’s center.
Karen shook her head and said, “You really shouldn’t hurt the things you love, Poo-Poo.”
Mutt nodded in agreement. He said, “That really is pretty rude, Poo-Poo.”
Poo-Poo turned to Stick Dog. “I didn’t mean to hurt it. I really didn’t.”
Stick Dog came closer and looked Poo-Poo directly in the eyes. “You didn’t hurt it,” he said, trying hard to suppress a grin. “You can’t hurt something that was never alive.”
“Excuse me, Stick Dog,” Poo-Poo said. “But if something bleeds from inside, it’s alive.”
“Why don’t you taste that red liquidy stuff?” Stick Dog suggested. “You’ll see.”
“That’s disgusting! Are you crazy?!” screamed Poo-Poo immediately. “I’m not a, umm, umm . . . leprechaun!”
Mutt, Karen, and Stripes looked equally aghast at Stick Dog’s idea.
“I think you mean ‘vampire,’” said Stick Dog calmly. He then stepped even closer and held his right paw above the red liquid. “May I?”
“Go ahead,” Poo-Poo said. “Yuck!”
Stick Dog dipped the tip of his paw into the center of the donut. He withdrew it, eyed the thick red drip on his paw—and then licked it off. It tasted like sugary strawberries. The taste perfectly matched the scent he had smelled earlier. It was totally delicious.
And it showed on Stick Dog’s expression.
Well, this instantly changed Poo-Poo’s entire attitude and demeanor. He stepped forward and dipped his own paw into the red liquid. He brought it to his mouth, hesitated a single second, and then licked it off.
“No way,” Poo-Poo said. He turned to Karen, Mutt, and Stripes. “You guys are not going to believe this.”
“What?” asked Stripes.
“That donut’s blood tastes like strawberries.”
“It’s not blood,” Stick Dog said. “It’s like smashed up, liquefied strawberries. It was never alive.”
Poo-Poo looked doubtfully at Stick Dog. Then he looked down to the ground where the rest of the donut waited for him. He could still taste the sweet strawberry flavor in his mouth.
And then his face softened.
Suddenly, Poo-Poo didn’t even seem to care anymore. He leaned down to the donut. His mouth hovered just one inch above it.
“Whatever,” he whispered, and shrugged. He picked the donut up in his mouth and finished it in three bites.
Mutt, Stripes, and Karen returned to finishing their second donuts as well.
Stick Dog was happy to have the “bleeding donut” crisis behind them so quickly. His only concern now was if the worker was coming back. Every minute or so, he glanced down the road to make certain the man was not returning. He knew that once he saw the man, they would have to leave.
But for now the man was nowhere in sight, his friends happily munched away at their donuts, and the sun was bright and warm overhead. Stick Dog leaned back against the truck, lifted his head to the sun, and closed his eyes—purely happy and satisfied that their donut mission had succeeded. It felt so nice for Stick Dog to rest there in the sun’s warmth.
In twelve seconds, Poo-Poo said, “I’m still hungry.”
Quickly, Mutt, Karen, and Stripes expressed the same sentiment. Stick Dog grinned a bit to himself and opened his eyes. For a split second, he was blinded by the sunshine. He blinked three times. Dots of white light danced in his vision as his eyes acclimated to the brightness. When the white dots faded, they were replaced with different dots.
Red dots.
The dots slowly took shape.
Apples.
And Stick Dog figured out what his instincts had been telling him.
Stick Dog had an idea.
He stood up, stretched his legs, and cast a knowing eye at those apples. There were dozens of them in every tree. Stick Dog knew that if he could fill the donut box with apples, then they’d all have plenty to eat today—and maybe even have some apples left over for tomorrow.
They had all tasted one of those apples before—about this time in late summer last year. They had romped through the woods searching for wild blackberry bushes when they came across this tiny, abandoned orchard with the road passing through it.
That day a strong random wind whooshed through the forest just as they went through the orchard. The wind shook a single apple off its stem. It fell to the ground, and the dogs formed a circle and each dog took a bite and rolled it to the next one.
Stick Dog remembered that flavor—tart and sweet. He remembered the crunch when his teeth broke through the shiny red-and-yellow skin. He remembered the juice as it dripped down his chin.
It was the only apple any of them had ever tasted.
And now he was going to get them some more.
Mutt, Karen, Stripes, and Poo-Poo stared at Stick Dog. He smiled and seemed lost in his own thoughts. His friends had never seen him like this. He was always alert, continually aware of his surroundings, and constantly looking out for his friends. But now, just for this moment, it looked like he was daydreaming.
Karen asked the question the others were all thinking. “Stick Dog, what’s going on with you?”
Stick Dog said, “I was just remembering that day we tasted an apple.”
“Don’t remind us!” Stripes said instantly.
“Yeah, Stick Dog,” Poo-Poo added. “That’s torture.”
Mutt looked up into the trees, frowned, and shook his head in sincere and genuine disappointment.
Karen started chasing her tail again.
“It’s only torture,” Stick Dog said, and lowered his gaze to look at his companions. “If we can’t get them.”
“We CAN’T!” Stripes declared loudly. “That’s the TORTURE part!”
With that, Stick Dog took a few steps toward the truck—and toward the basket at the end of the crane.
Stick Dog glanced down the road in both directions—and saw nothing.
He climbed into the basket at the end of the long, mechanical arm. He stepped around the hard hat on the basket floor. Stick Dog stood on his hind legs and propped his front legs up on the control box. It was easy for him to lean forward and balance this way.
Stick Dog looked down at the joystick and buttons on the control panel. There was one green button off to the right that was bigger than the others.
He pressed it.
And the motor inside the crane whirred and vibrated to life.
Chapter 12
THE RISE OF STICK DOG
Poo-Poo, Mutt, and Stripes stared wide-eyed as Stick Dog began to rise up in the air. Even Karen stopped chasing her tail to stare in absolute wonder.
Stick Dog did not rise perfectly. It took him a minute or two to get the feel of
the joystick—to understand how shifting it a certain way would move the basket up and down or left and right. But once he had a sense of how things worked, he moved closer and closer toward an apple tree. In no time, he was immersed among the branches and leaves with many apples within reach.
“Get the donut box!” he yelled down from above. This startled his friends out of their trance-like observations.
“There aren’t any donuts left in there!” Poo-Poo yelled up. “We ate them all. Remember? And since you’re up there with all those apples, don’t you think you should pick some for us to eat? I mean, I don’t think donuts are just going to magically appear in the box again. You know what I mean?”
Karen whispered, “Stick Dog rarely knows what he’s doing.” Then she decided that running laps around the truck as fast as she could was the best thing to do at the moment. And that’s what she did.
Stick Dog eyed the street in both directions before responding to the others. The good news was, the worker was not walking back from the donut shop yet. The bad news was that a car—a bright-yellow convertible—approached from the opposite direction. It was still very far off, but Stick Dog knew cars could move fast. He didn’t have much time. “We’ll use the empty box to bring the apples back to my pipe. We can fit a bunch in there.”
“Oh, good idea! I was just about to think of that!” Poo-Poo called. He opened the flaps, preparing the box to hold as many apples as possible.
Poo-Poo, Mutt, and Stripes gathered beneath Stick Dog.
Karen started her fourth lap around the truck.
And Stick Dog began to drop apples down.
Only a few of the apples were actually caught. Most plopped onto the soft green grass, bounced a couple of times, and rolled to a gentle stop. One hit Poo-Poo right on top of his head. He smiled after the impact.
From then on, Poo-Poo began to dart this way and that way, trying to get hit again.
He succeeded twice.
It was a speedy process. By the time Karen had finished her seventh lap around the truck, Stick Dog had dropped more than a dozen apples to Mutt, Poo-Poo, and Stripes. He glanced down to see that the donut box was full of apples. He stopped picking and dropping them, and snapped his head left to look down the road toward the donut shop. The worker was, thankfully, still nowhere in sight. When he turned his head in the other direction, however, the news was not nearly as positive.
The yellow convertible was much closer than Stick Dog anticipated. It was traveling at a high rate of speed—and would be to the truck in seconds.
Stick Dog yelled only one word.
And he yelled it fast.
“Hide!”
That was all his friends needed to hear. Poo-Poo, Mutt, and Stripes dove back under the truck. Karen raced one more lap around it and miraculously noticed that the others were all missing. She stopped, heard them call from beneath the truck, and dove under too.
Stick Dog saw that his friends were safe.
And he saw something else too.
The yellow convertible was much closer, had four human passengers—and was slowing down. Stick Dog had seen this kind of behavior before on Highway 16 on top of the hill above his pipe. Traffic slowed down when work trucks were on the side of the road.
But Stick Dog didn’t want this car to slow down now. He only had a few seconds until it was close enough for the driver and passengers to see him. Stick Dog couldn’t maneuver the arm down—that would take way too long. He couldn’t crouch very low—the basket was too narrow.
Stick Dog had only one idea.
He snatched the hard hat from the basket floor and pulled it onto his head, yanking it down as far as he could.
Rather than turn suddenly away from the yellow convertible, Stick Dog looked straight down as it slowly passed beneath the long, jointed mechanical arm. The front-seat passenger, a woman, stared into the rearview mirror and applied lipstick. The driver, a man, talked on his phone and didn’t look up at all. He was far too wrapped up in his conversation—gesticulating with his arms and hands as he spoke—to notice something like a dog in a hard hat at the top of a mechanical crane.
But the two passengers in the backseat, a girl and a boy, were smart, curious, and inquisitive. They saw a crane and wanted to know why it was there and what kind of work was being done.
And who was doing it.
So they looked at the person in the basket.
And saw that it wasn’t a person at all.
It was a dog.
It was Stick Dog.
They saw him, and their eyes flashed open in shock and surprise.
And then they passed under the crane.
Stick Dog didn’t know, of course, what happened in the car next. He watched to make sure it didn’t stop, turn around, and return to see a dog at the end of a crane in an apple tree.
It didn’t. It just kept driving down the road past the donut shop—and out of sight.
Stick Dog suspected the little humans told the big humans what they had seen. He also suspected the big humans didn’t believe them and continued to put on their makeup and talk on the phone.
“All clear!” Stick Dog yelled, and took off the hard hat. “You can come out now!”
Mutt, Karen, Poo-Poo, and Stripes emerged from beneath the truck.
“One more apple drop and then we better get out of here!” Stick Dog called. He manipulated the joystick and directed the basket down to the lowest branch of the tree. He saw a big red apple there. It looked perfectly delectable. This would be the last one.
His friends gathered under Stick Dog, waiting for the bright-red fruit to fall. Poo-Poo hoped he could get one more, just one more, knock on the head.
Stick Dog steered the basket exactly where he wanted. He reached for the last apple.
But he didn’t pick it.
Do you know why?
I’ll tell you.
Farther down the branch, closer to the trunk, something caught his eye.
Something moved.
Something twitched.
It was gray.
It was puffy.
Stick Dog slowly maneuvered the crane back out of the tree and away from this lowest branch. He looked down at his friends on the ground.
“Poo-Poo!” Stick Dog called quietly. “Stay right there! I’m coming to get you!”
While Stick Dog descended, Mutt, Karen, Stripes, and Poo-Poo waited next to the truck. They were extremely curious about why Stick Dog suddenly wanted to come get Poo-Poo.
“He probably needs my help,” Poo-Poo suggested to the others as Stick Dog descended. “I mean, let’s face it. I really am the alpha dog here. It’s no surprise that Stick Dog needs me to finish the job. Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t summon me earlier.”
Mutt, Stripes, and Karen didn’t say anything.
Poo-Poo kept looking at each of them to gain verification of his alpha-dog-ness. An awkward silence hung in the air among them.
But only for eight seconds.
Because in eight seconds, Stick Dog had maneuvered the long crane the rest of the way down to the ground. Stick Dog said, “Poo-Poo, you’re—”
“You don’t need to tell me, Stick Dog,” interrupted Poo-Poo. “I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, ‘Poo-Poo, you’re the obvious alpha dog among us. You should take over.’”
“Umm, no, I wasn’t,” said Stick Dog.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” Stick Dog answered. “I was going to say, you’re—”
“A brave and noble alpha dog?” Poo-Poo said, attempting to finish Stick Dog’s sentence again.
“Umm, no,” Stick Dog repeated. “You’re—”
“Brilliant, fierce, and loyal?” Poo-Poo tried again.
“No. You’re—”
“Really handsome and charming?”
“No. You’re—”
“Alpha-tastic?”
Stick Dog waited a few seconds. Then he asked, “Can I finish my sentence, please?”
“Thanks. I appreciate that,” Stick Dog said. “Here’s what I was going to say: You’re about to get the chance you’ve always wanted. There’s a squirrel up there.”
Poo-Poo instantly crouched down and SPRANG up, soaring through the air toward the mechanical arm’s basket. He landed right outside its door, lunged in so quickly that he bonked his head against its wall, didn’t care—and stretched up on his hind legs right at Stick Dog’s side. He whipped his head around to stare at Stick Dog.
There was controlled fury and complete determination chiseled into his expression. His jaw was firmly set. His eyes were squinted. He whispered, “Let’s go!”
Stick Dog placed his paws on the joystick and began their ascent toward the apple tree’s lowest branch—and the squirrel who was up there.
Chapter 13
DOG VS. SQUIRREL
On the short trip up, Poo-Poo peppered Stick Dog with rapid-fire questions.
“Are you sure it’s a squirrel?”
“I’m sure,” Stick Dog answered as he steered the basket back up into the tree. He also shot looks in both directions down the street. No humans were in sight.
“Did it have a puffy tail? Squirrels have puffy tails.”
“It did.”
“Was it gray? Squirrels around here are gray.”
“It’s gray.”
“Whiskers? Twitching whiskers? How about those?! Did it have those? Did it?! Huh!?”
“I couldn’t tell,” answered Stick Dog. “I only saw the tail.”
“You sure it was a squirrel? Not a raccoon? Or a bird? Or a cow?”
Stick Dog took his paws off the joystick. The basket stopped climbing. He looked at Poo-Poo. “A cow? In a tree?”