The Return of the Charlie Monsters

by John R. Erickson

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’re under arrest.”

  His eyes popped wide open. “Arrest? Gosh, what did I do?”

  “That will be the subject of your court martial, and we might as well get right to it. Sit down, make yourself comfortable.” He sat down and I began pacing circles around him. “How do you plead?”

  “Oh, red, I guess.”

  “Explain that.”

  “Well, my blood is red.”

  “Good for you. So what?”

  “Well, when I bleed, it’s mostly red.”

  I marched over to him and leaned into his face. “I said plead. P-p-p-plead!”

  He flinched and blinked his eyes. “You sprayed me in the face.”

  “Sorry, but when you don’t listen, I have to exaggerate my words.” I resumed my pacing. “Let’s try this again. How do you plead? And red is not an option. Innocent or guilty?”

  He rolled his eyes around. “Well, I feel guilty a lot of the time. It just eats me up.”

  “Tell this court about your feelings of guilt.”

  “Well, let’s see. I’ve always tried to be a good little doggie. I promised Mom that I would be, but sometimes…I just feel like a rat.”

  “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere, and already I’ve found a fly in your ornament. Look at your tail and tell this court what you see.”

  He twisted around and…oh brother, he fell over backwards. “I can’t see it.”

  “Yes, but deep in your cheating little heart, you know what’s there, don’t you?”

  He lowered his head and began to sniffle. “Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You have no choice. Sit up straight and tell this court what your tail would look like if you could see it.”

  He picked himself up and returned to the witness chair. “If I could see my tail, it would be long, and that’s what I’ve always wished for, but I can’t see it ‘cause it’s so short. For as long as I can remember,” his voice quivered, “I’ve had a stub tail.”

  “Exactly my point. Don’t try to convince this court that you feel like a rat. You can’t possibly feel like a rat, because your tail is too short!”

  Wow, what a bolt of lighting. The little mutt was stunned and finally whimpered, “Can I leave now?”

  “No. We’re just getting started. Having destroyed your claim that you’ve felt like a rat all your life, I will now read the list of charges.” I glanced down at my yellow legal pad and read the long list. “Insubordination, treason, treachery, disobedience, desertion, failure to render aid, cowardice in front of a cat, and cheating. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I left ‘cause I knew it was another one of Pete’s tricks.”

  “So! You knew and didn’t tell your commanding officer? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yeah, ‘cause you never listen.”

  “Guilty as charged!” I walked over to him and glared into his eyeballs. “Soldier, we’ve got enough dirt to put you away for a hundred years, but I’m feeling generous. This court sentences you to one hour with your nose in the corner. To the brig, march!”

  We’d been through this routine so many times, I didn’t have to tell him which corner in which to put his nose into which. He went straight to the southeast corner and stood in the Nose Position.

  The worst part of this deal was that I had to stand guard. I didn’t dare leave him, see, because I knew he would cheat. The little goof had spent so much time around the cat, we couldn’t trust him to follow the Code of Honor.

  I paced and yawned, scratched a few fleas, and time sure did crawl. After what seemed hours, he broke the silence. “What did you think of the song? I wrote it myself.”

  “Do you want my honest opinion?”

  “No, just tell me it was great.”

  “It wasn’t great. It wasn’t even good. It was the worst piece of musical junk I’ve ever heard. Why would you make up a song about a grasshopper?”

  “Well, we’ve got a lot of ‘em this year. There’s no sense in letting ‘em go to waste.”

  “Drover, everyone hates grasshoppers. Grasshoppers have no friends, and nobody wants to hear a song about one.”

  “Yeah, but he had a name: Joe Fred. I thought that was pretty neat.”

  “It wasn’t neat, it was ridiculous. And you know what else? If you keep talking about it, you might get court-martialed again for writing tiresome little songs.”

  “Can I get out of prison now?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Maybe we can make a deal.”

  “I don’t make deals with prisoners.”

  “I found a nest.”

  “You’re wasting my time, Drover.”

  “There were three eggs in it, and I didn’t eat ‘em.”

  “I care nothing about…what kind of eggs?”

  “Chicken eggs, I guess.”

  “Why didn’t you eat them?”

  “Well, they had shells.”

  “All eggs have shells. They’re called ‘egg shells.’”

  “Yeah, but what about shotguns?”

  “Shotguns have shells too, but the point is…” I paced over to him. “Drover, bribing a guard is a very serious…you said three eggs?”

  “Yep.”

  “Any bacon?”

  “Nope, just eggs, and they looked pretty good.”

  “Hmm.” I examined all the clues under the microscope of my mind. “Maybe we’d better check it out.”

  “Can I get out of jail?”

  “If there is actually a nest, and if it actually contains three eggs, we might suspend your sentence.”

  He leaped with joy. “Oh goodie! Follow me.” And with that, he went scampering into the dark and gloomy depths of the machine shed.

  You’ll never guess what we found back there.

  Chapter Seven: Poisoned

  Here we go. I followed Drover into the dark and spooky part of his Secret Sanctuary. Near the northwest corner, where Loper kept his canoe and Sally May kept her grandmother’s furniture, we found a crude nest in the dust.

  The nest contained three eggs. Are you surprised? You should be, for the simple reason that Drover’s tips usually turn out to be wrong. Somehow this one turned out to be correct.

  You’re probably wondering why a hen would lay eggs in a barn when she could do it a lot easier in the chicken house. Great question. I mean, Sally May had fixed up her chicken house into a five-star hotel for birds. It had everything a hen could want, including two rows of straw-lined nests.

  The answer lies in the psychobirdicle makeup of a chicken’s mind, and there’s a nice, big scientific word you might want to add to your vocabinetry list. Let’s take a closer look at this interesting word and break it down into parts.

  Psycho-bird-icle. “Psycho” means crazy, “bird” means chicken, and “icle” means…I’m not sure what it means, but it shows up in other words, such as icicle and bicycle. Perhaps we place “icle” on the end of a long word to equalize the weight, so that it doesn’t tip over and fall out of the sentence. But the important thing is that when we put all three pieces together, we get a nice, big word that means “crazy chicken icle.”

  And now we understand why a hen might lay eggs outside the chicken house—because your average chicken is dumb beyond belief. If you take that as your starting point, it’s perfectly reasonable that a chicken would walk past a five-star chicken-house hotel and lay a bunch of eggs in a dusty barn.

  How do I know so much about chickens? I live with the morons. I watch them all the time. I get paid to protect them from bad guys who love chicken dinners. Slurp. Please disregard that sound. It meant almost nothing.

  I know chickens, is the point, and they’re liable to squat down and lay an egg anywhere on the ranch. And you know w
hat else? Half the time, they go off chasing bugs and forget where they laid the eggs. Unbelievable. They are dumb beyond dumb.

  Anyways, some disoriented hen had left a bonanza of eggs for me in the machine shed, so let’s rush on with the mush. Mush on with the story, that is.

  Drover was excited. “There it is. Are you proud of me?”

  I pushed him aside and began collecting evidence. A Sniffatory Analysis confirmed that they were indeed chicken eggs, which was an important piece of information. Do you know why? Buzzards have been known to lay eggs in barns, and nobody wants to eat a buzzard omelet.

  Drover was watching and drooling. “What are you going to do with ‘em?”

  “Well, I’m not going to hatch them out. We can start there.”

  “Are you going to eat ‘em?”

  “That’s correct. Eggs laid outside the chicken house are fair game, and Sally May will never miss them.”

  His eyes blazed with gluttony. “Gosh, maybe I could eat one.”

  I stuck my nose in his face. “You will not eat one. They’re mine. Your reward is a free pass from jail. Now scram, go scratch a flea.”

  “Well, you don’t need to get all hateful about it.”

  “Sorry, I’ve had a bad day.”

  “Yeah, I watched. Hee hee.”

  I melted him with a glare. “You’d better leave or you might end up spending the rest of your life behind bars. Scram!”

  At last he left, but he’d gotten one thing right. (A little humor there, did you get it? He left but got one thing right. Ha ha.). Anyways, he got one thing right: Pete had really ambushed me on that turkey deal, and I made a mental note to add his name to my Doom List.

  I waited until Drover had slipped through the crack between the sliding doors, then turned my attention to the feast that lay before me: three nice, big, fresh country eggs that were just waiting for a dog to give them a slurp…to give them a home.

  My eyes were smoldering with Omelet Desire. My tongue had to work a double shift to keep the water mopped up inside my mouth. I took one last glance over both shoulders, just to be absolutely sure that Radar Woman wasn’t lurking in the shadows.

  Then and only then did I lower my nose to ground level, scoop the first of the eggs into my mouth, and crunch down. The shell made a pleasant crackling sound and my mouth tingled with…my mouth tingled with…

  You know, it had kind of a cheesy taste, and that seemed odd. Oh well, omelets often contain cheese and dogs love omelets, so…no problem. I gulped it down and spit out the shells. It was then that I noticed…

  Green? The inside of the shells was green and the air seemed to contain the odor of…was that sulfur?

  Huh?

  I cut my eyes from side to side. Remember our discussion about chickens laying eggs all over the ranch and forgetting where they left them? Guess what happens in the summertime to the eggs that don’t get hatched. They become ROTTEN EGGS. They turn green inside and reek of sulfur and…holy cow, I had just eaten one!

  I needed some air, fast. I sprinted to the door and staggered outside. There, I grabbed a big gulp of air and…found myself looking straight into the eyes of Drover. He seemed despondent. “Oh hi. How were the eggs?”

  “I only ate one.”

  A sparkle came into his eyes. “You left two for me? Oh boy! Thanks a bunch!”

  “Wait. Drover…”

  Too late, he was gone. For a moment, I thought of rushing back inside to warn him, but then…no, by George, let him learn a valuable lesson about gluttony. Experience is the best teacher, right? That very morning, I had learned a powerful lesson about the treachery of cats, and he might as well get some schooling on eggs. Hee hee.

  Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. It might be constroodled as heartless and mean, but you have to admit it was pretty funny.

  It didn’t take long for the little mutt to go to school on rotten eggs. Within seconds, I heard a scream inside the barn, and moments later he emerged, looking as though he’d just swallowed a spider.

  I tried to put on a serious face. “Drover, you have green foam all over your mouth, and you’re looking pale.”

  He gasped for air. “What were those things?”

  “Well, they were rotten eggs. If you hadn’t been such a greedy pig, I would have told you not to eat them.”

  “Yeah, but I did eat ‘em! Help, murder, I’m going to be sick, oh, my leg!”

  In spite of his so-called bad leg, he made a dash down to the corrals and dived into the stock tank. For the next three minutes, he dog-paddled around the tank and gargled water to get the taste out of his mouth. Then he staggered out of the tank and proceeded to throw up his toenails, and we’re talking about all over the corrals.

  The place would be contaminated for months.

  It was a sad spectacle. Hee hee. Okay, it was pretty funny.

  Well, to quote a wise old saying, his eggs had come home to roost. Greed hath its price, and so does Attempted Bribery. Don’t forget that he had bribed his way out of jail, only to fall victim to his own vanilla. His own villainy, let us say. It was kind of inspiring, the way his deeds had come back to honk him, and it confirmed that justice will always…

  Borp.

  Excuse me. It confirmed that justice will always…you know, my stomach was a little uneasy, come to think of it, but let me point out that I didn’t get sick and barf all over the ranch. Do you know why? Some dogs are tough, and some dogs are little weenies. Little weenie dogs have little weenie stomachs, and they get sick over nothing.

  Take your average poodle as an example. Just say “rotten egg” to a poodle and he’ll go into convulsions. They’ll have to rush him to the vet clinic and pump out his stomach and put him on bupp. Excuse me. On medication.

  Drover wasn’t a poodle, but sometimes he acted like one, and I can tell you that at several staff meetings, his weenie ways had been a major topic of discussion. There was even talk of firing him.

  This latest incident with the eggs wouldn’t do him any good with the Chief Joints of Stuff. The Jointed Chiefs of…borp. Excuse me. The Joint Chiefs of Staff. Unless Drover took steps to toughen up, his future with the Security Division was going to be a matter of concern.

  I don’t want to sound cold-hearted. I knew the little mutt tried to be strong, but his behavior reflected badly on the whole organization. How did it make us look when one of our employees spent half an hour, gargling water in a stock tank and throwing up all over the ranch? Bad. It stained the reputation of the entire Security Division.

  Oh well. He would either toughen up or continue his weenie ways, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I was lost in these thoughts when, all at once and out of nowhere, I heard a voice in the distance.

  I lifted Earatory Scanners and began pulling in sound waves. There it was again, the voice of a child. Unless I was badly mistaken, he was calling…us, his dogs.

  “Here Hankie! Here Drover! Here doggies!”

  By that time, Drover had dragged himself back up the hill and was looking…well, not so good. “Drover, we’ve been summoned.”

  “I’m sick.”

  “Little Alfred wants us to report to the yard gate at once.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me those eggs were rotten?”

  “First, you were in such a rush to make a hog of yourself, I didn’t have a chance to warn you. Second, you needed to learn Life’s Lessons on your own. And third, you watched me get sandbagged by the cat and said ‘hee hee’.”

  “Well, I’m not saying ‘hee hee’ now.”

  “Good. We’re making progress.”

  He gave me a mournful look. “How come you didn’t get sick?”

  “Self-borp…self-discipline. Tell yourself you won’t get sick and you won’t get sick. Mind over matter. Are you going on this mission or not?”

  “I’m out. I’d have
to feel better to die.”

  “Very well, but this will go into my report.”

  I left him there and sprinted down the hill. There, I found…you’ll see.

  Chapter Eight: Anything For the Kids

  The boy was standing beside his mother’s car which was parked behind the house, beside the yard gate. As I drew closer, I did a Visual Sweep for clues and saw that the left rear door of the car was open.

  They were about to leave for Bible School.

  When I arrived on the scenery, the boy greeted me with his broad smile and open arms. “Hi Hankie!” You know, there’s a special bupp…excuse me…a special bond between dogs and little boys. It’s one of the constants in the universe. When nothing else makes sense, when the rest of the world seems to be falling apart and driven by greed and pettiness, we can always fall back on that special bond between dogs and boys.

  I flew into his arms and gave his face a good licking. Sometimes those face-washes will produce a few tasty memories of breakfast, which makes the dog’s job quite a bit more interesting, but this time we drew a blank—no traces of toast, jelly, bacon or…I was fixing to say “eggs,” but we’ll skip that.

  The point is that someone, either Little Alfred or his mom, had done some scrubbing on his face and had removed all traces of breakfast, but that was okay. In this life, love and devotion are way more important than jelly.

  The boy seemed excited about going to Bible School. “We’re learning about Joseph and his coat of many colors.”

  Joseph? I did a search on that name and got one result: Joe Fred. Remember him? He was the grasshopper who’d had the starring role in Drover’s miserable little song. Was this some kind of clue? I didn’t think so.

  Alfred continued. “And Noah’s ark and Zacchaeus up in the tree.”

  Zacchaeus must have been a cat, which reminded me: our local cat needed to be parked in a tree, and I would attend to that just as soon as Sally May departed the ranch.

  The boy’s eyes were shining. “Hankie, maybe you could go to Bible School with us.”

  With us? Did that include his mother? Ha ha. That would never happen. Sorry.