The Secret Laundry Monster Files

by John R. Erickson

  “That was me.”

  “Oh. You sure rolled him.”

  “Thanks. Go on.”

  “Well, he rolled about ten feet and got up, and that was all.”

  “What about the yellow boots?”

  “No, he was barefoot.”

  My eyes rolled up into my head. “Drover, please try to concentrate. Who told you about the yellow boots?”

  “Well, let me think here. Yellow. Boots. Yellow boots. I don’t know.”

  “Then why did you mention it? There must be more to this than meets the eyeball.”

  “Okay, I’m working on it.” He wadded up his face and wrinkled his nose. “I saw the yellow boots and I thought they looked . . . funny.”

  “Funny? You mean, funny ha-ha?”

  “Ha, ha. Ha, ha.”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “I don’t know. You laughed and I thought . . .”

  “I did not laugh, and do you know why? This is no laughing matter. It could be very serious.”

  His face acquired a very serious expression. “There, is that better?”

  “Much better. Now get to the point. Who told you about the yellow boots?”

  “Well . . . nobody. I just saw ’em and they looked . . . yellow.”

  “Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere.” I began pacing, as I often do when my mind is driving toward a solution. “The boots looked yellow. Tell this court what thoughts or feelings came to your mind when you saw the so-called yellow boots.”

  “Well, let me see here. I thought . . . I thought they were the yellowest boots I’d ever seen.”

  “Good. The boots looked yellow, therefore you assumed they were yellow, is that correct?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Good. We’re getting close to something. One last question, Drover. Did you happen to notice the tiny bumps on the surface of the alleged yellow boots?”

  “Oh yeah, I saw ’em right away. Ostrich boots always have bumps.”

  I stopped my pacing and turned my head slowly around. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that man’s an ostrich? Because if that’s what you’re saying, Drover, I must warn you . . .”

  “No, they’re ostrich boots.”

  I heaved a sigh and searched for patience. “Allow me to point out a floy in your ointment. Cowboys wear cowboy boots. Ropers wear roper boots. Hikers wear hiking boots. Following this path of simple logic, who or what wears ostrich boots?”

  He rolled his eyes around. “I’m confused.”

  “Ostriches, Drover.”

  “You mean, he’s an ostrich?”

  “No! That’s my whole point. And if he’s not an ostrich, those can’t possibly be ostrich boots. You said they were ostrich boots. Therefore, you are wrong, wrong, and wrong.”

  “I’ll be derned. I thought they were.”

  “They’re not, and I will now prove it beyond a shallow of a doubt.”

  Let me pause here a moment to say a word about my conversation with Drover. You might have found it a bit confusing. Don’t worry. So did I. Talking with Drover often leads to feelings of confusion.

  See, on a certain level, it might have appeared that we were arguing about whether or not the owner of the yellow boots was an ostrich. No. That would have been a foolish argument, for the simple reason that the owner of the boots was obviously NOT an ostrich. He was a man, a human person.

  What Drover neglected to say in his pathetic attempt to argue his case was that the whole discussion came down to the subject of leather: were the boots made of ostrich leather or ordinary cow­hide leather? Thus, when he made the claim that the boots were “ostrich boots,” he was referring to the leather, not to the occupant.

  Is it clear now? I apologize for this mix-up, but I must tell you that this is typical of Drover. He has a tiny mind and he is careless in his use of words. The result is often bedlam and confusion.

  Now, where were we? Oh yes, he had just made the claim that the stranger’s yellow boots were made of “ostrich leather.” This, of course, was outrageous. In the first place, ostriches are birds, right? Yes, they are birds, large birds with long skinny legs and equally long and skinny necks. In the second place, it is common knowledge that boot leather does not come from birds, whether their necks are skinny or not.

  Boot leather does not come from birds. Period. Has anyone ever heard of “hummingbird boots” or “mockingbird boots” or “chicken leather boots”? No sir. If it has wings and pin feathers, it’s a bird and you can’t get leather out of it.

  Ostrich skin boots? I had never heard of anything so ridiculous. And to prove it once and for all time, I marched over to the stranger and proceeded to give his boots a thorough Sniffospectral Analysis.

  Sniff, sniff.

  Aha! Just as I suspected. Our preliminary report showed a strong reading of boot leather, and no reading whatsoever for chickens, birds, ostriches, or . . .

  BONK!

  He kicked me on the nose. The cad flicked the toe of his left boot in such a way that it rammed into our sensitive testing equipment! And then he said—this is a direct quote—he leaned over and said, “You leave a wet nose print on my new ostrich boots, Shep, and I might make another pair out of your hide. Scram. Scat!”

  Sure, fine. Hey, if he had something against the march of scientific research, if he wanted the world to be plunged into darkness and ignorance, that was his problem, not mine. I had tried to do my job. I had made a sincere attempt to shine the light of scientific truth into the darkness of . . . something . . . and by George, if he wanted . . .

  Wounded and saddened by this shabby affair, I turned away from his stupid yellow boots and marched back to Drover.

  And my name wasn’t Shep.

  Chapter Ten: Fresh Evidence of a Raccoon Attack

  Drover was grinning.

  “Why are you grinning? That man just set the march of scientific research back twenty years. My investigation ended in failure.”

  “No, he gave the answer. Don’t you remember?”

  “I remember nothing but a sudden rush of pain on the end of my nose.”

  “Well, he said . . . Let me think here . . . He said, ‘You leave a wet nose print on my new ostrich boots . . .’ That’s the answer. They’re ostrich boots, and I was right. Are you proud of me?”

  I held him in the gaze of my watering eyes for a long moment. I hardly knew what to say. “So that’s it, huh? You’re going to believe him over me?”

  “Well . . . they’re his boots. He ought to know.”

  “Yes, but his boots are on my ranch. Had you forgotten that? As long as his ridiculous yellow boots are on my ranch, they are not made of ostrich leather, period. Do you know why? Because I refuse to believe that you can make boots out of bird skin.”

  “Well . . . I guess that’s all right with me. What are they made of?”

  “They’re made of . . .” I cut my eyes from side to side. “They’re made of porcupine skin. Porcupines are cowardly animals, and therefore yellow. Do you see the connection?” He stared at me with crossed eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t cross your eyes at me. It gives me the feeling . . .”

  At that very moment, the front door opened and Loper walked out of the house. He stepped off the porch and came down the sidewalk. He met the stranger at the gate and they shook hands. I was observing all of this and taking mental notes of every tiny detail. Here, let’s give a listen.

  Loper: “Morning, Joe Don. Those are some mighty pretty boots. Ostrich?”

  Joe Don: “Yep, full quill ostrich. Bought ’em yesterday on sale.”

  Okay, stop the tape. You’ll notice that this “Joe Don” fellow continued to insist that his yellow boots were “ostrich,” an obvious lie and fabrication. At that point we weren’t sure why he wanted to conceal the fact that they were made of Cowardly Porcupine, but notice
that he revealed a very crucial piece of information. Maybe you missed it.

  Full quill.

  Do you see what this meant? I’ll give you a hint. What kind of animal has quills? Heh heh. Not an ostrich, fellers, but a PORCUPINE. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell Drover? Yes, with that tiny revelation, I had blown the Case of the Yellow Boots wide open.

  Pretty impressive, huh?

  Okay, back to the tape.

  Joe Don: “Where do you want this horse feed?”

  Loper: “Down at the feed barn. Slim’s down there somewhere. Holler and he’ll help you unload it.”

  And that was it. Joe Don climbed into the pickup, in the back of which was a big stack of bagged horse . . .

  HUH?

  Yes, the bed of the pickup was stacked high with fifty-pound bags of feed, but there was something else in the back of that pickup, and there’s no way you will ever guess what it was.

  I was shocked, amazed, astammered when I saw it.

  Or should I say . . . HER.

  It was a woman. A lady dog.

  She was a blond cocker spaniel, and fellers, when I saw her up there in the back of Joe Don’s pickup, I felt myself melting into a big puddle of dog hair. I mean, she wasn’t just pretty, she was gorgeous!

  Description: long blond hair, big brown eyes, a darling little nose, long curly eyelashes, great ears, teeth, and paws. Oh, and she had a red ribbon perched on her lovely little head. She was a knock­out, the prettiest lady dog I’d seen in months or years, and after catching that first glimpse of her, I knew that she was the Woman of My Dreams.

  At this point, you may be asking yourself, “But what about Miss Beulah, Missy Coyote, Miss Scamper, and all the other lady dogs in Hank’s life?” Well, they too were Women of My Dreams, but this was, well, a different dream.

  I caught a brief glimpse of her before Joe Don fired up the motor and drove down to the feed barn. There I stood in the cloud of caliche dust, too startled to move, too smitten by love to utter a sound.

  Drover was there beside me, and I had every reason to suppose that he, too, had just been hit on the head by the Cinder Block of Love. He’s a copycat, you know, especially when it comes to the ladies. He’s always trying to butt into my romances. Where he gets the idea that a lady dog might be interested in him, I don’t know.

  Well, yes, I do know. He’s immature and has a wild imagination.

  I heaved a sigh and stared off at the pickup. “Drover, did you see what I just saw?”

  “You mean, the horse feed?”

  “Not the horse feed. The lady dog.”

  “Oh, her. Yeah, I saw her. Boy, what an ugly dog.”

  Slowly, I turned my head around and held him in my gaze. “Ugly? What are you talking about?”

  “Well . . . she’s a Pekingese, and I think they’re kind of . . . ugly. You know, their noses are pushed in.”

  “Drover, any dope can see that she’s a cocker spaniel.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure she’s a Pekingese.”

  “Tell you what, Drover. Let’s march down to the feed barn and settle this thing once and for all. I will ask her myself.”

  And so it was that we left the area in front of the house and marched ourselves down to the feed barn. I was still feeling a bit . . . uh . . . full, shall we say, and perhaps I wasn’t marching as crisply as usual. Drover noticed.

  “Gosh, you’re sure walking funny. And you look kind of . . . fat.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject, Drover. The problem with you is that when you see a beautiful lady dog, you lose your head. It’s a sign of immaturity, you know.”

  “I’ll be derned.”

  “You need to work on those things.”

  “Okay. But you still look . . .”

  “Hush.”

  At last we reached the feed barn. Joe Don had backed up the pickup in front of the door and Slim had joined him. Both men began carrying . . .

  Oops. I suddenly remembered the, uh, phony candy. Maybe you’d forgotten about that, and maybe I had too, but . . .

  I heard Slim’s voice. “Dadgum raccoons! They got in here and tore up a whole sack of feed.”

  Hmmm. Obviously he’d found the evidence of . . . of Eddy’s penetration of our feed barn. I rushed inside and studied the cream of the crime.

  The scene of the crime, shall we say, and yes, Slim was right. The raccoons had torn up a whole sack of horse feed. I was shocked and outraged. I began whipping my tail from side to side, and beamed Slim my Look of Deepest Concern.

  “Hank, where were you when the coons busted in here and tore up this sack of feed?”

  Well, I . . . Far away. Out on patrol. Nowhere close to the, uh, feed barn. No kidding.

  “Well, pooch, we’ll be storing twenty sacks of feed in here, and I’d advise you . . .” His voice trailed off, and it appeared that he was staring at . . . well, at ME. “Good honk, what have you been eating, an inner tube?”

  Who, me? No, I certainly had not eaten an inner tube. No.

  His eyes narrowed. He glanced down at the sack of—yipes—at the plundered sack of feed. Then his eyes swung back to me. “Surely you didn’t . . . Nah, dogs don’t eat horse feed.”

  There! Did you hear that? It had come straight from Slim’s mouth: Dogs don’t eat horse feed. In other words, I had been cleared of all the suspicions and false charges against me, and I was free once again to beam Looks of Outrage at the damage created by the outlaw raccoons.

  What a mess! Why, there must have been two or three of them . . . maybe even five . . . a whole gang of barn-wrecking raccoons, and through Angry Wags and facial media, I beamed the message to Slim that this would never happen again. Not on my watch, not while I was in charge of Ranch Security.

  Boy, I was really mad. Imagine those thuggish raccoons, stealing feed right under my nose! They would pay for this.

  The men went back to the job of unloading the feed, and though I was so outraged about the plundered feed that I could hardly speak or think of anything else, I . . . uh . . . tore myself away from the scene of the crime and turned my attention to . . .

  WOW!

  I could see the lovely lady dog sitting up on the tool box, watching the men. Even at a distance, the earthquake of her beauty sent a tremor through my heart.

  I marched up to the pickup and let my adoring gaze float up to her. “Well, my goodness, look what we have here. A lady dog has come to visit our ranch. Afternoon, ma’am, I’m Hank the Cowdog, Head of Ranch Security.”

  She saw me and . . . she SMILED! “Oh, hi. I’m Trudy. I stay in town.”

  “Ah, Trudy, what a special name! Hey, listen to this.” And with that, I sang her my special Trudy song. Have we ever done it before? Maybe not. Here’s how it went.

  Trudy, Trudy, What a Beauty!

  Now Trudy, you have caused a stir among us dogs today.

  We’re all excited, all shook up, we don’t know what to say.

  Drover thinks you’re Pekingese, he says your nose is pugged,

  But I don’t care, O gorgeous one, my heart has just been mugged.

  Trudy, Trudy, what a beauty.

  Makes me think of more than duty.

  I sure hope that you’re not snooty, Trudy.

  Perhaps you’ll be my sweet patooty.

  Cocker spaniel, that’s my guess, I love your floppy ears,

  One look at them and right away my mind was stripping gears.

  Your stringy hair is fixed just right, I love those liver lips.

  A kiss from them could cause a wreck and sink a thousand ships.

  Trudy, Trudy, what a beauty.

  Makes me think of more than duty.

  I sure hope that you’re not snooty, Trudy.

  Perhaps you’ll be my sweet patooty.

  I see that you are smirking and it�
��s causing me some pain.

  Perhaps you think I’ve lost my mind and really gone insane.

  Well, maybe so but you’re the cause, for showing up out here.

  Those big old cocker spaniel eyes have knocked me on my rear.

  Trudy, Trudy, what a beauty.

  Makes me think of more than duty.

  I sure hope that you’re not snooty, Trudy.

  Perhaps you’ll be my sweet patooty.

  That got a smile out of her. I knew it would. “Well, lawsy me! Did you make it up yourself? It rhymed and everything, didn’t it?”

  “Oh sure. Rhymes come easily to me, Miss Trudy, for you see, they come straight from my heart.”

  “Ah, no fooling? That’s sweet. But you’re too fat for me.”

  I moved closer. “Fat? Hey, I can explain . . . Ma’am, I must tell you that I’m not the kind of dog who falls in love at first sight, but . . .” I noticed that her gaze was wandering, so I shifted my plan of attack. “Miss Trudy, I wonder if I might ask you a question.”

  She glanced away. “I guess so. Sure.”

  “You see, Miss Trudy, my assistant and I were having a little debate. Now, we both agreed that you’re gorgeous”—I gave her a secret smile—“but we couldn’t agree on whether you’re a cocker spaniel or a Pekingese. I wonder if you could . . .”

  She perked up. “Who’s your assistant?”

  “His name’s Drover, but that’s not important. The point is . . .”

  Her eyes widened. “Is that . . . him?” She pointed her paw at . . . well, in the general direction of . . . okay, she seemed to be pointing toward Drover, who was sitting off by himself and gazing up at the clouds. Her mouth bloomed into a smile, which I thought was very weird, and then she said, “Oh, my! Oh, my, my, my! He’s so . . . keeee-yoooot!”

  Chapter Eleven: The Toad Factor

  Drover heard this. His stare moved down from the clouds and rested on Miss Trudy. He gave her a goofy smile and waved his paw. “Oh, hi.”

  She rushed to the edge of the tool box and looked down. “So you’re Drover?”