Me, asleep during the day, during office hours? Ha ha. I don’t need to tell you how ridiculous that was, but I’ll say it anyway, just for the record. It was ridiculous. Outrageous. The Head of Ranch Security does not fall asleep at his desk on the twelfth floor of the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex. Period.
Or, to come at it from a slightly different angle . . . okay, maybe I had dozed off, but who wouldn’t have dozed off? Hey, I’d been putting in eighteen hours a day and burning the candle with both lightbulbs. I was worn to a frazzle, exhausted by the heavy responsibility of running my ranch, and maybe I had slipped off into a light doze, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Anyway, this guy came bursting into the office, and there he stood right in front of me. Description: big guy, huge, five feet tall at the shoulders; massive head; teeth like a shark; wicked red eyes that blinked on and off like a neon sign. For several long moments, we stared into our respective eyes (I stared into his, he stared into mine), and an eerie silence grew between us like . . . well, like an eerie silence.
I rose from my chair, spread my right paw into a karate-chopping device, and said, “Whenever the spinach leaves, the sprouts go on forever!”
This must have really rocked him back on his axles, and all he could say was, “What?”
So I repeated my statement, only louder this time. “Utility poles will never be toothpicks, regardless of the whickerbills!” I blinked my eyes and looked closer at the stranger. “Who are you? Have we met before?”
“Yeah, we meet about a hundred times every day. I’m Drover.”
I narrowed my eyes and studied him closer. “Whose driver?”
He grinned. “No, I’m Drover, plain old Drover.”
“Okay, maybe you’re Drover now, but who were you when you walked into this office? The dog I saw was huge, and he had blinking red eyes.”
“Nope, it was me all along. I guess you were asleep.”
I strolled over to the door and peeked out into the hall, just to be sure that we weren’t being eavesdropped on by a cat or an enemy spy. Only then did I return to his side and whisper, “Drivel, I’m going to ignore what you said about me being asleep. If I were to put that into my report, it would come back to honk you.”
“Yeah, but my name’s Drover.”
“Please stop telling me your name. I know your name.”
“What is it?”
“Drivel.”
“No. Drover, Drover with a D.”
“Oh, you think I can’t spell? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well . . . I think you’re still asleep.”
“Who sent you? I must know. It could send this case into an entirely different direction.”
He gave his head a shake. “Well, I was Drover when I walked in, and I’m still Drover and nobody sent me.”
I studied his face again, more deeply this time. “Wait, hold everything. You’re Drover!”
Holy smokes, it was my assistant, and I had just caught him sneaking around in my office. Had he parachuted onto the roof of our building and broken in through one of the sealed glass windows? Had he been stealing top-secret information out of our files?
I didn’t know, but I had to find out. Don’t forget the wise old saying . . . I can’t remember the wise old saying, so skip it. The point is that I had to find out what was going on in my own office.
I began pacing, as I often do when we have fog at the top of the mountain. “All right, let’s go over this one more time. How did you get into my office?”
“Well, I just walked in.”
“Ah! So this didn’t involve helicopters or commando units? Is that your version of events?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, you say you ‘walked in.’ Does that mean you used your own legs?”
“Yeah, all four of ’em. Sometimes I limp, but my bad leg’s been holding up pretty well.”
My eyes prowled around the office as I put these two clues together: bad leg and limp. “Okay, this is matching up with our profiles. You really are Drover.”
“Oh good. That’s what I thought.”
“But why were you trying to use a false identity? Never mind. What are you doing in my office?”
“Well . . . I came to tell you something.”
I stopped pacing and gave him a cunning squint. “You weren’t trying to break into our files?”
“We don’t have any files.”
“Hmmm. Great point.” I paced a few steps away from him. “Very well, if you came to tell me something, maybe you should tell me.”
Keep reading. This next part is pretty amazing.
Chapter Five: Drover’s Shocking Report
Drover had come bursting into my office, remember? And he’d said he had something important to tell me. After a moment of silence, I said, “Go on with your story. You said something about spinach leaves.”
He gave his head a weary shake. “You’ve got me so messed up, I can’t remember what I’m doing here.”
“Oh, you’re going to blame me? Drover, you’ve been messed up for years. I should have said something about it a long time ago, but I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. When did you first notice the spinach leaves?”
“Yesterday . . . today . . . I don’t know.”
“Were they in the garden?”
“I guess. I don’t care.”
I glared at the runt. “If you don’t care, then why did you come blundering into my office, screeching about spinach? How can a dog get any work done around here?”
“You were asleep.”
“I was not . . .” My gaze drifted around. “Drover, I think I’ve just figured it out. I must have been asleep. I guess the pressure finally wore me down.” I pointed to a chair. “Here, sit down and let’s chat. It’s not often that I have a moment to chat with the men.” He sat down. I sat down. “Tell me about the toothpicks.”
“Well, they’re little sticks of wood.”
“Yes? Go on.”
“Well . . . dogs never use ’em.”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
“I didn’t bring it up. You did, toothpicks and spinach leaves.”
“What? You mean . . .” My gaze moved around the room. I saw the gas tanks, two gunnysack beds, and Drover. After a long moment of silence, I cleared my throat. “Drover, there’s something I must tell you.”
“Yeah, and I had something to tell you, if I can remember what it was.”
“I have seniority so I’ll speak first.” I leaned toward him and spoke in a hushed tone. “Drover, this conversation we’ve just had . . . in some ways, I feel that it lacked . . . uh . . . clarity.”
“Yeah, and clarity begins at home.”
“Exactly, and home is where the heart attack is.” There was a long moment of silence. “Drover, I suggest we forget that we ever had this conversation. The world must never be told what goes on inside these walls.”
He glanced around. “We don’t even have any walls.”
“Exactly my point. If our people ever suspected that their dogs carried on loony conversations behind walls that don’t exist, we could lose our jobs. Now, tell me why you came bursting into my office.”
Drover gave me a blank stare. “Well, let me think here.” He wadded up his face into a knot of flesh and hair, and rolled one eye around. It appeared that he had entered into a moment of deep concentration. At last he said, “Oh yeah, now I remember. I saw two big birds out in the pasture.”
“Birds? I’m not interested in birds.”
“Yeah, but you told me to watch for ’em. They’re huge and have long skinny legs.”
“Buzzards, Drover, probably Wallace and Junior, and I’m still not interested.”
He dropped his voice. �
��They’re not buzzards. I think they might be those Dinosaur Birds.”
I stared at the runt. “The dinosaur birds! Why wasn’t I informed of this?”
“Well, I tried, but you . . .”
I leaped out of my chair . . . Okay, I leaped out of my gunnysack bed. Our ranch is such a fleabag outfit, a stinking gunnysack is all the furniture we have in our office. You’d think . . . oh well.
“All right, son, let’s check it out.”
Drover led the way and I followed him past the garden, past the corrals, past Emerald Pond, up the hill, past the machine shed, and out into the home pasture. I figured this would be a dry run. Most likely he’d seen a couple of chickens or buzzards or maybe killdeers. Drover has a wild imagination, you know, and his reports can’t be trusted.
After we had passed the machine shed, he stopped and pointed at something in the distance. “There, see?”
It appeared that he was pointing toward something . . . two somethings that wore feathers and stood on long skinny legs . . . and, my goodness, they weren’t buzzards, chickens, or killdeers. I squinted my eyes and looked closer and noticed . . . their beaks were ENORMOUS, I mean, almost as long as their bodies!
Huh?
Holy smokes, he was right. Terradogtail Dinosaur Birds, two of ’em.
Suddenly I felt the hair rising along my backbone, and a cold chill passed through my entire body. I took a step backward. “Drover, listen carefully. We’re fixing to go into Red Alert.”
“Didn’t I tell you they weren’t buzzards?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know what you said, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that those things don’t belong to this world.”
“Yeah, I tried to tell you.”
“Will you please hush? On the count of three, we will go into our Red Alert Drill, only this isn’t a drill. Ready? Three!”
ZOOM. Fellers, I ran.
Behind me, I heard Drover’s voice. “Wait, what about one and two?”
“I’m trying to trick them! To the bunkers!”
Well, I told you this was going to turn into a scary story, and maybe you didn’t believe me. Now you know the awful truth, and the awful truth is pretty awful.
I went streaking down the hill to the gas tanks and dived under my gunnysack bed. Moments later, I heard Drover’s huffing and puffing, and he dived under his bed. An eerie silence spread across the whole world, and I reached for the microphone of my mind.
“Peaches, this is Rhubarb. Switch to Emergency Frequency. Do you copy?”
“You told me to run on the count of three, but you didn’t say one and two.”
“Drover, when we go up against dinosaur birds, we must use stealth and cunning. They’re extremely dangerous.”
“I told you they were dinosaur birds, but you didn’t believe me. I was right, wasn’t I?”
I pondered his question. “Drover, if I admit that you were right, you must promise never to tell anyone.”
“How come?”
“Because . . . because it really hurts to admit that you’re right. I won’t do it unless you promise not to tell.”
“Well, okay. I promise.”
I took a big gulp of air, squared my shoulders, and prepared to deliver a brutal confession. “All right, Drover, I’m about to speak three words that I have rarely used in my career, and they’re going to hurt me more than you can imagine. You. Were. Right.”
Chapter Six: We Send Out a Scout Patrol
Suddenly I heard a burst of strange noises coming from outside my bunker. “Tee hee hee hee hee!”
“Drover, I just heard an explosion of peculiar sounds. It wasn’t you, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t tee hee.”
“Oh, good. There for a second I thought you were laughing and gloating.”
“Oh, heck no, not me hee. It must have been those dinosaur birds.”
“Hmmm. Good point. It stands to reason that they would make some kind of chirping sound.”
“Yeah. What I heard was, ‘Tee hee hee hee hee hee hee!’”
“Exactly. Tell you what; let’s exit the bunkers. I’ll meet you outside in three seconds. Go!”
Three seconds later, we met in daily broadlight outside our bunkers. In the broadlight of day, I noticed that Drover was grinning. “Why are you wearing that silly grin?”
“Who, me hee? I didn’t know I was grinning.”
“You were and still are. Wipe that smirk off your mouth, soldier. We have important business to discuss.”
Drover wiped the silly grin off his mouth, and we got down to some serious business. First thing, I did a complete Three-Sixty Scan of the surrounding territory. In a Three-Sixty, we swing our gaze around in a complete circle, just to be sure we’re not being spied upon by cats or enemy spies or even chickens. In this line of work, we never know where danger might be lurking.
Take those chickens, for example. They run loose during the day and spend a lot of time loitering around headquarters, pecking gravel and various insects. Sometimes their loitering brings them close to our Secured Areas, and naturally that makes us suspicious. We’re never sure if they’re just being dumb chickens or if they’re actually enemy agents wearing chicken suits, so we watch ’em closely.
So I did my Three-Sixty Scan and . . . Did I mention that our Scanning Devices don’t turn the full three hundred and sixty degrees? They don’t. They’ll turn about half the circle and at that point they lock down. Sometimes during this lockdown event, a dog will lose his balance and, well, topple over backward.
That’s what happened, but here’s the strange part. Apparently the dinosaur birds were spying on us, because when I hit the ground with a thud, I heard the same chattering sounds we had heard before: “Tee hee, tee hee, tee hee!”
I picked myself off the ground and rolled a couple of kinks out of my back. “Drover, I think those birds are laughing at us.”
His gaze drifted up to the clouds. “I’ll be derned. I never would have hee hee thought of that.”
“What?”
“I said, I never would have thought of that.”
“Yes, and that’s why I’m here, son. The analysis of intelligence intercepts requires intelligence and . . . well, you come up a little short in that department.”
“Yeah, but I’ve always tried to be tall.”
“Good for you. Never give up hope.” I narrowed my eyes and gazed off into the pasture. The birds were still there. “Okay, this has gone far enough. We can’t just sit here and allow those birds to make a mockery of the entire Security Division.”
“Yeah, what a couple of rats.”
“Here’s the plan. We’re going to send out a scout patrol. We must find out what they’re doing on our ranch.”
“Great idea!”
“And Drover”—I laid a paw on his shoulder—“we’re looking for volunteers.”
His eyes blanked out. “Volunteers for what?”
“We need one good man to lead the scout patrol.”
“Yeah, but I’m just a dog.”
“That’s what I mean. We need one good dog, and this could lead to a big promotion . . . if you should happen to come back alive, of course.”
“You said I was too short.”
“Height is not an issue here.”
“Yeah, but . . .” He shrank back and placed a paw over his chest. “You remember that heart problem we were talking about? Boy, this old heart is really starting to flutter.”
“That’s what hearts do.”
“Yeah, but not like this.” Suddenly he began wheezing and coughing, his eyes crossed, and he tumbled over backward on the ground. “Oh drat, there it went! First the leg and now the heart! Oh my heart, oh my leg!”
I beamed a steely gaze at the little mutter-mumble. I knew he was faking this, I KNEW it, but . . . well, the heart prob
lem was something new, and I sure didn’t want to run the risk that, for the first time in his whole life, he might be telling the truth. Weird things like that can happen, you know.
So what’s a guy to do?
“All right, I’ll lead the mission. I’ll win the medals for bravery, and you’ll spend the rest of your life brooding over all the opportunities you missed.”
“I know; I hate it. The guilt’s already starting to eat at me.”
“Good. I’m leaving you in charge of the relief column.”
“Boy, that’s a relief.”
“If I’m not back in half an hour, send fresh troops. We have no idea what we’ll be facing out there, but we could get ourselves into some serious combat.” I whirled around, pointed myself toward the north, and began marching off to . . . I knew not what.
Was I scared? Of course I was scared. Nobody in our Security Division had ever gone up against a pair of dinosaur birds. We’d had no training in Terradogtail Defense. Our combat manuals had nothing about their weapons or tactics, such as . . . what did they do with those oversized beaks? Did they have teeth . . . poison stingers . . . laser weapons that could reduce a dog to a puff of smoke?
You bet I was scared, but the job had to be done and my assistant was just too much of a chicken to do it.
I had gone, oh, maybe twenty steps when I heard an odd sound. “Tee hee hee.”
I stopped, froze, lifted one ear, and listened. The sound had stopped. I whirled around. “Drover, did you say something?”
“Me? Well, let me think. No, it wasn’t me hee.”
“I’m almost sure I heard someone say, ‘Tee hee hee.’”
“Oh, that. Yeah, it was those birds again. I guess they’re really laughing it up.”
I squared my enormous shoulders. “Well, let ’em laugh while they can. At the end of the day, we’ll see who’s laughing.”
“Yeah, and it won’t be them hee hee.”
The Case of the Dinosaur Birds Page 3
