The Case of the Tricky Trap

by John R. Erickson

  I shot a glance at Slim. He was grinning and poking along at about three miles an hour, lost in thoughts of his next big adventure, catching a live raccoon in his fleabag trap. Could we hurry up? I mean, it was nice that he had let us dogs ride in the pickup with him, but for crying out loud . . .

  Hot waves began washing across my face. I was smothering! My tongue was dripping like a leaky faucet. And my stomach . . . something was going on down there and it wasn’t good news. Something very bad was happening in the deep caverns of my . . .

  I stared at the road ahead and tried to concentrate on pleasant thoughts: sunshine, spring flowers, green grass . . . oops, that was exactly the wrong topic to be thinking about, because . . .

  Listen, we need to talk about green grass. Remember my lecture to Drover about the importance of salad in a dog’s diet, and how grass is good for the digestion? It had sounded good at the time, and I had spoken those words with the greatest of sincerity, no kidding, but I was beginning to suspect that . . . how can I say this? Okay, let’s try another approach. In the Great Game of Life, we have our facts that have been proven through years of experience and those facts that are still . . . uh . . . theoretical. The theoretical facts sound good, and sometimes they even sound great, but they haven’t been submitted to rigorous testing.

  See, we knew for a fact that dogs sometimes get an irrational craving for green grass. What we didn’t know, what we couldn’t have known, was . . . well, what might happen if a dog not only ate a few sprigs of grass, but maybe ate a whole bunch of it. A gallon. A bushel. Half a ton.

  We had no test data to show what might happen to a dog who wolfed down two tons of green grass, but our internal instruments were beginning to suggest . . .

  I swallowed hard and stared at the road ahead. I was panting and my tongue continued to drip. The air inside the cab had turned hot and putrid. I really needed to, uh, step outside for a moment, but Slim was still poking along, as slow as a . . .

  Uh-oh. I felt this . . . this creepy feeling in the dark depths of my innards, as though a mysterious hand had reached inside me, had closed its deadly grip around my stomach, and had begun . . .

  All at once my head began moving up and down, and I heard this . . . this really weird sound that seemed to be coming from . . . well, from my own body and soul. UMP. UMP. It wasn’t a happy sound or the kind of sound a dog would want to make inside the closed cab of a pickup that smelled like . . .

  And suddenly I knew that my life had been seized by Unseen Forces. See, that business of my head moving up and down . . . I wasn’t in control of it. It wasn’t coming from my own free will. Some evil force had climbed inside my body, had taken command of all my Vital Plumbing Functions, and . . .

  The pickup came to a sudden stop and I went crashing nose-first into the dashboard. I turned my soggy eyes toward Slim and saw that . . . well, that he had melted into a blob of bacon fat. Honest. His face was wavy and fuzzy . . . UMP, UMP . . . and, gee, my head was moving up and down again . . .

  “Hank, if you barf in my pickup . . . !”

  After that, everything became a blur.

  Chapter Three: Dogs Should Never Eat Salad

  Where were we? Oh yes, hauling Slim’s live-trap down to the feed shed. No problems there. The mission was a complete success. We hauled the trap down to the feed shed. Slim backed the pickup to the door and we began . . .

  Wait a second. We’ve skipped over a few details. To be honest, I’d rather not talk about them, but I guess we have to. You already know, don’t you?

  It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but maybe we can wring a few Life Lessons out of the dishrag of . . . something.

  Let’s get it over with. Remember those mysterious convulsions that were causing my head to move up and down? We thought my stomach had been taken over by the Evil Gremlins, right? Well, this will come as a surprise, but those forces had been produced by my own body. I had become a sick dog.

  What could have brought on this mysterious illness? Well, riding in a closed pickup was a big part of it. And being bounced around on a rough road. And don’t forget that it was flu season. I mean, we’d heard reports that dogs all over Texas were dropping like flies. No kidding.

  Okay, the green grass. If you recall, we’d gotten some bogus information suggesting that green grass is good for a dog’s digestion. Ha! Rubbish. I don’t know who puts out such screwball information or who would be dumb enough to . . .

  Wait. That report had come from Drover, right? I’m almost sure it had. Let me think back and try to remember our conversation exactly. As I recall, Drover had tried to convince me that eating grass is something a dog should do. How did he put it? Salad. He said that green grass is actually a form of salad and that dogs need salad as part of their overall dietary so-forth.

  And as I recall, I laughed and scoffed at the idea. I mean, what a joke. A dog eating grass! Ha! But on the other hand, I had no wish to hurt the little guy’s feelings. He tries to be helpful, you know, and I sure didn’t want to, uh, crush his spirit, let us say.

  So what’s a dog supposed to do, tell his friend that he’s come up with a crazy idea? Laugh in his face? A lot of dogs would have done that, but, well, there’s a part of me that’s very sensitive to the, uh, feelings of others. No kidding.

  So I took a Higher Road, so to speak, and . . . well, you know the rest. I ate a bunch of grass. And let’s talk about that. Grass is for RABBITS. Grass is for cows, horses, sheep, and other forms of life that are too dumb to eat proper food. The bottom line here is that dogs should never eat salad or grass.

  But I did it anyway—for Drover. Was my sacrifice worth the price I had to pay? I’m not sure. It certainly got Slim stirred up. I mean, on an ordinary morning he’s not what you would call electric, but fellers, when he saw my head moving up and down, and heard those horrible sounds coming from the depths of my inner bean, he went electric.

  In the space of a few seconds, he slammed on the brakes, jerked the door open, and chunked me out of the cab. And then he said . . . this kind of hurt my feelings . . . he said, “Hank, you’ve got no more class than a sack full of turnips!”

  What did class have to do with it? Hey, what did he want me to do, sit there like a nice little doggie and die of Salad Poisoning? Ha. He could forget that.

  Oh, and he had one more hateful remark. I couldn’t believe this part. He said, and this is a direct quote, he said, “Hank, do me a favor. When you throw up, don’t eat it again. Bozo.”

  Well, I had never been so insulted! The very idea, him thinking that I might . . . I held my head at a proud angle and beamed him a look of righteous . . . UMP, UMP . . . that is, all at once the gravitational force of the earth pulled my nose toward the ground. My head moved up and down three times, as unseen forces activated powerful pumps in my gizzardly depths. And then . . .

  Anyway, the toxic particles returned to the embrace of Mother Earth, shall we say, and suddenly I felt that a heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders. From my stomach. I felt a hundred percent better, is the point, and I turned a righteous glare at Slim, who was driving away.

  “And for your information, pal, I wouldn’t even think about eating it again! What do you think I am, a moron?”

  There! He didn’t hear me, but that was okay. I had needed to express my feelings of outrage, and I’d done it.

  At that point, I looked down at the ground and saw . . . hmmm. Sprigs of green parsley floating in a French sauce. Hmmmm. You know, some experts claim that parsley is actually good for dogs, and all at once . . . never mind.

  The impointant poink is that I had made a noble sacrifice to spare little Drover from embarrassment and humiliation. Yes, I had paid a price for my good deed. Slim had thrown me out of the pickup and had mocked me in my time of weakness, but in the Security Business, we have learned that virus is its own reward.

  Virtue, that is. Virtue is its own
reward and sometimes that’s all we get.

  Now, where were we before this crisis began? Oh yes, the trap. I didn’t help Slim set his trap in the feed shed, not after he’d insulted me and wounded my spiritual so-forth. Any man who would insult a loyal, hard-working dog in a time of trouble didn’t deserve to be helped.

  He deserved to be shunned and ignored, and that’s what I did. For the rest of the day, I stayed away from him. I didn’t even help him feed the cows. Anytime he came close to me, I turned my back on him, rolled my eyes up to the heavens, and assumed a posture we call “Martyrs and Saints.”

  The whole purpose of Martyrs and Saints is to remind the offending party (Slim) of all the saints and loyal dogs of long ago, whose good deeds and sacrifices had left a shining example for those who followed.

  Did it work on Slim? We’ll never know. He’s a hammerhead, very stubborn and not too bright, and I’m sure the deeper messages were lost on him. But he knew that I was torqued. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out.

  Around sundown, after putting in an exhausting day of doing Martyrs and Saints, I returned to my office on the twelfth floor of the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex. Okay, my office was under the gas tanks, but who’s impressed if you tell ’em your office is under a couple of five- hundred-gallon fuel tanks? Nobody.

  I breezed into the office, checked the stack of mail on my desk, and noticed that Drover was already there, gawking at me.

  I gave him a stiff nod. “Oh, so it’s you.”

  “Thanks, me too. How was your day?”

  “My day was . . .” I allowed my gaze to drift around, then I dropped it on him like a hammer. “Drover, I’ve decided I’m going to forgive you.”

  “Oh, good. Thanks.” There was a moment of silence. “What did I do?”

  “You stood by and watched while I consumed toxic quantities of green grass.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “It made me sick. I could have died.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Drover, I thought we were comrades. Friends. Partners in the Journey of Life.”

  “Yeah, but you said . . .”

  “I know what I said, but you stood there and let me say it.”

  His head began to sink. “Well . . .”

  “Drover, dogs were never meant to eat grass or salad or anything a rabbit would eat. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, and I tried to warn you, but you never listen.”

  I looked down at him and shook my head. “See? You’re turning this thing around and trying to blame me for it.”

  “Well, you ate it!”

  “There you go again. You’re accusing me of eating the very grass that made me sick? Is that what you’re telling this court?”

  “Yeah, and it’s the truth.”

  I paced a few steps away, lost in deep thoughts. “Drover, there are many shades of truth. Our task here is to find the right shade that will allow you to take some responsibility for my own actions.”

  “You mean . . .”

  I whirled around and faced him. “Yes! Admit that mistakes were made, apologize for my actions, and let’s get on with our lives.”

  He sniffed his nose and wiped a tear from his eye. “Well, okay. I’m sorry you made such a dumb mistake.”

  “You really mean that?” He nodded. I rushed to his side and extended the Paw of Friendship. “Good for you. Here, let’s shake on it. Drover, it takes a real dog to do what you just did.”

  “Well, I’ve always tried to be real.”

  “And you’ve succeeded. I’m proud of you, son. Don’t you feel better already?”

  He worked up a smile. “Yeah, but you know, I never felt all that bad to start with. You’re the one who threw up.”

  “Hmmm, good point. But you’re feeling better about that?”

  “Oh yeah, I thought it was funny as heck.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You did say something. Did you say it was funny as heck?”

  “No, I said . . . I said, I sure like this gunny sack.”

  “Oh. Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “Great sack.”

  This had turned into kind of a touching moment. I mean, we had worked our way through a crisis situation and had confronted Drover’s problems head-on. I placed a paw on his shoulder and gazed up at the darkening sky. “You know, son, in this crazy business, all we have is us, ourselves.”

  “Well, we’ve got fleas.”

  “I know, but at a deeper level, it’s just you and me against the forces of evil. The only thing that keeps us going is . . . the quality of our minds.” Drover began to cough. “Did you choke on something?”

  “Yeah, it’s hard to swallow.”

  “Beware of swallowing, son. Don’t forget, that’s how you got us into this mess in the first place.”

  And with that, we shut off the lights, turned off all our communications systems, and prepared for some well-deserved sleep.

  Chapter Four: We Catch Something in Our Trap

  It must have been sometime in the middle of the night. I awoke with a jolt and sat up. “Drover, I hate to disturb you, but I just thought of something.”

  In the darkness, I heard his voice. “Thought bought murgle wump watermelon.”

  “Are you awake?”

  “Rumple ragamuffin.”

  “Slim set a live-trap in the feed shed, remember?”

  “Remember December hopalong horse feathers.”

  “Drover, one of us needs to check the trap. I was wondering if you might like to volunteer.” I lifted my ears, waiting for his answer. I heard grunts and squeaks. “Drover, this could be a very smart career move. It would look good on your résumé. Think of it: trap-checking on a dark lonely night. What do you say?”

  “Murgle skiffer pork chop, buzz blop buggy bumpers.”

  I heaved a sigh, jacked myself up to a standing position, and gazed down at his twitching carcass. “Look, I’m not going to argue about this all night. Do you want the job or not?”

  “Honk wheeze whiffle.”

  “Fine, I’ll do it myself. Just tell me again how the trap works. I don’t want to walk into this thing blind.”

  “Wheezle whickerbill soap suds.”

  “On second thought, just skip it.”

  I whirled around and marched out of the office. As I began my trek to the feed shed, I found myself thinking about this latest conversation with my assistant. It’s been said that the sleeping mind sometimes reveals deep thoughts that disguise themselves as nonsense. Was it possible that Drover’s slumbering mind had tried to communicate some hidden message? I probed my memory and pulled up a transcript of his mutterings:

  1. Rumple ragamuffin.

  2. Hopalong horse feathers.

  3. Buzz blop buggy bumpers.

  4. Honk wheeze whiffle.

  5. Wheezle whickerbill soap suds.

  Was there some thread that ran through these beads of nonsense and gave them a shape that wasn’t obvious at first glance? The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that, yes, something profound was going on here. For example, did you notice that he tended to repeat certain sounds? Rumple ragamuffin, buzz blop buggy bumpers, and so forth. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

  And look at the wide variety of subjects he’d covered in the space of just a few seconds: watermelons, ragamuffins, horse feathers, whiffles, whickerbills, buggy bumpers, and soap suds. That was really amazing. I mean, when he was awake, Drover never talked about those subjects, so the clues were beginning to suggest that he had a secret life that he’d never shared with the rest of us.

  I tried to imagine the fantasy world that Drover had invented for himself. It was a place where horses had feathers, ragamu
ffins wore rumpled suits, buggies had bumpers, and whickerbills ate soap suds. Now, if I could just come up with the magic thread that linked them all together . . .

  By the time I reached the feed shed, I had finally worked it out. Drover was a lunatic, and what he muttered in his sleep was even nuttier than what he said when he was awake. I would waste no more time trying to make sense of his nonsense.

  Sorry to bother you with that mess, but I keep hoping that one of these days we’ll find signs of intelligent life inside Drover’s head. At this point, it doesn’t look good.

  But never mind. I had set out on an important mission and nothing Drover had muttered in his sleep could keep me from it. Standing in front of the feed-shed door, I made a quick review of my objectives.

  I would enter the structure through the warped door and check out the trap situation. If we had captured a thieving raccoon, I would post a guard and remain on station through the rest of the night, just to make sure the little creep didn’t escape or tear anything up. If the trap was empty, I would return to base.

  That pretty well covered it. Maybe you think this kind of plan-and-review procedure wasn’t necessary, and I’ll admit that a lot of your ordinary dogs wouldn’t have bothered to go through a checklist. But we do things a little differently in our Security Division. See, ninety percent of mission failures are caused by dumb little mistakes: inadequate planning, poor concentration, and . . .

  What was the other one? I don’t remember, but it was a dandy. Oh well, two reasons for mission failure are plenty. After all, it only takes one dumb mistake to wreck a mission.

  Where were we? Oh yes, poor concentration. The main difference between your Heads of Ranch Security and your ordinary run of ranch mutts is . . . I can’t remember that one either, so let’s skip it and get on with the mission.