Rod grabbed his ear, but somehow managed to say, “And you smell like a sack of rotten oranges, too.”
Billy had planned this day so that everything would go smoothly. He didn’t want any trouble from Rod, so he just ignored his insults.
“That goat is spending the weekend with us,” he explained. “Cleaning up the yard. Why don’t you come meet her?”
“My brother’s afraid of animals,” Amber blurted out. “He’s a scaredy-cat.”
“I am not,” Rod snapped.
“Are, too,” she answered. “Aren’t undercover agents supposed to tell the truth?”
“I would come meet your stupid goat, no problem,” Rod said to Billy, “but I’m busy right now. I’m … I’m … having company and I have to get the house ready.”
“Teddy and Jack are coming to play with me, not you,” Amber shouted. “They don’t care if the house is messy. You’re just scared.”
Rod gave Amber such a fierce look, she screamed and took off running across the lawn to the house.
“Mommy,” she yelled. “Rod’s making the mean face at me again!”
“I am not,” he yelled, chasing her into the house, which Billy realized gave Rod the perfect excuse to avoid coming anywhere near the goats.
Billy and the Hoove headed for the truck, reaching it just as Smiley was climbing out of the cab. He was a small man in overalls, with light, wide-set eyes and a long white goatee. He actually looked a little like a goat, but without the horns, of course.
“You Billy?” he said. “I hope you’re ready. Them goats is kicking up a storm back there.”
“Wait a minute,” the Hoove said to Billy. “He said goats. I thought we were getting a goat, as in one.”
“I’ll handle this,” Billy whispered to him. Then, turning to Smiley, he said politely, “I think we only ordered one goat, sir.”
“Yeah, well, Grady wasn’t doing anything today, so I thought I’d throw him in for free,” Smiley said. “He’s a real muncher, not like lazy old Beatrice here.”
“Well, I guess that’s okay,” Billy said. “After all, two goats are better than one.”
“Says who?” the Hoove complained. “Two goats take twice as much work, and not to be gross, also make twice as many pellets. Who’s going to clean those up? Trust me, not yours truly.”
But the Hoove’s protests were too late. Smiley had already opened up the back of the horse trailer and was guiding two goats onto the street. They were both sneezing.
“Do your goats have a cold?” Billy asked Smiley.
“Nah, they just sneeze when they’re alarmed. All goats do. It’ll stop as soon as they get used to you.”
He led the goats over to Billy.
“This one’s Grady,” he said, petting a large brown-and-white goat with a long beard and an impressive set of horns. “And this fatso over here is the one and only Beatrice,” he added, pulling on a rope to guide a white goat, who looked like she had a baby goat in her stomach, onto the curb.
Beatrice let out a long bleat that sounded like an unhappy toddler calling her mother.
“Maaaaaaaah,” she complained, and Billy couldn’t really blame her. No one likes being called a fatso, even a goat. Right away, Billy liked Beatrice, and what was even more surprising was that the Hoove did, too. Beatrice walked up to Billy and put her chin right next to his chest, giving him a thoroughly wonderful nuzzle. The Hoove floated over to her tentatively. He had grown cautious of animals after he was so cruelly rejected by Kung Fu. But unlike Kung Fu, Beatrice didn’t seem bothered by his ghostliness at all. She nuzzled the general area of his midsection, or where his midsection would have been, if he had an actual body, the same way Penelope had done back in the old days. She had been such a good goat. He remembered the time he visited her in the barn and brought her an entire sack of turnips. She dug into them like candy while he went to get her fresh water. When he came back with the water, he discovered that she had devoured the whole sack but had saved one purple turnip, which she held between her teeth and dropped at his feet, as if to say, “I saved this one for you.” With this memory in his mind and Beatrice nuzzling his body, a huge smile spread across the Hoove’s face.
“This goat has excellent taste,” he beamed. “Clearly, she knows a quality person when she sees one.”
Smiley was a little confused. Since the Hoove was totally invisible to him, what he saw was Beatrice nuzzling air.
“Come on, you crazy old thing,” he said, giving her rope a gentle tug. “You’re here to work, not to blow kisses in the air.” Then, with a laugh, he looked at Billy and said, “Goats, you gotta love ’em.”
Smiley and the two goats followed Billy across the front yard and over to the side gate that led to the backyard. Billy noticed Rod peering through his binoculars from his living room window. He had the urge to set one of the goats loose in the Brownstone backyard just to freak Rod out, but thought better of it. That would set a poor example for the Hoove, who had already unlatched the gate and was holding it open.
“Right this way, kids,” Hoover told the goats, giving each of them a little bow and a stroke of their heads as they passed. He was really on his best behavior, and a wave of hope swept over Billy. This was the Hoover Porterhouse the Higher-Ups had been waiting to see. At last, they had a plan that was going to work.
When the goats reached the backyard, the whole family was waiting to greet them. Bennett had his camera and started snapping pictures right away. Mrs. Broccoli-Fielding fed each of them a granola bar as a welcome treat. Even Breeze had graced the scene with her presence, although she had put on some heavy work boots with her shorts to make sure her feet didn’t come into contact with any stray pellets.
While Billy’s parents signed some paperwork and gave Smiley his money, the Hoove got busy helping Grady and Beatrice get adjusted. He and Billy walked them toward the back of the yard, where the grass was tallest and the garden least tended. Grady headed right for a stack of dandelion weeds that had been pulled up, but not thrown away yet, and dug in like it was a T-bone steak. Beatrice hung out next to the Hoove, taking a bite or two of grass and then nuzzling him while she chewed. And chewed. And chewed. Goats have four stomachs, so there was a lot of chewing involved.
Billy worried that Beatrice and Grady would be upset when Smiley left. But after the bill was settled, Smiley just gave each goat a gentle swat on the rump and said, “See you tomorrow, you old goats,” and left. Grady and Beatrice didn’t even bleat good-bye. They just snuggled up to the Hoove like he was their long lost dad.
For the first hour, the two goats cruised around the backyard, taking bites of grass and weeds and ivy with an occasional piece of cardboard or a leftover seed packet thrown in. The Hoove was gentle as could be, brushing stray twigs off their beards, leading them to a couple of avocados that had fallen off the tree, helping scratch their backs when they rubbed up against the tree trunks. At one point, Billy saw him staring at a little sparrow sitting on a low branch of the peach tree.
“See that bird?” the Hoove said to Billy. “He used to be a bald eagle. He works for the Higher-Ups. I think they sent him here to check on me.”
Billy didn’t want to start up a conversation with the Hoove with his family nearby, so he didn’t answer, just nodded.
“Why don’t you go tell your bosses how good I’m doing,” the Hoove yelled at the bird. “Tell them I am the picture of responsibility. Tell them I am Mr. Responsibility himself. Go on, make yourself useful for once!”
“You should talk,” the bird chirped. “I wouldn’t call babysitting a couple of bearded cows exactly useful.”
“They’re goats,” the Hoove snapped. “I’d think you’d know that.”
“Goats, cows. They’re all just four-legged poopers in need of scoopers to me.”
Billy was very surprised when the bird spoke, then took off and flew high in the sky, disappearing at lightning speed. It seemed unbelievable to him that the sparrow worked for the Higher-Ups, but ever
since he had met Hoover Porterhouse, he had learned that many things that seemed unbelievable were actually true.
It didn’t take long for Breeze to get bored.
“I’m going inside.” She yawned. “All this chomping is getting on my nerves.”
Gradually, Billy’s parents drifted away, too. When you get right down to it, watching goats graze doesn’t make for the most exciting afternoon. By noon, even Billy found himself plopped in a lawn chair, taking a little snooze. Only the Hoove stayed by the goats’ sides, tending to them like he was a born goat herder.
Billy was startled awake when two shrill voices pierced the stillness of the afternoon.
“Goats!” one screamed.
“Way cool!” screamed the other.
Before Billy could even get up from his chair, two boys had charged into the backyard through the hole in the chain-link fence that separated their yard from the Brownstones’. Both boys wore LA Kings hockey helmets and carried small hockey sticks made for eight-year-olds. They were followed by Amber, who was also carrying a hockey stick but wore a sparkly tiara in her hair and a feather boa around her neck.
“Here comes Princess Hat Trick,” she sang. “I am the ruler of the Kingdom of Ice.”
“Hey, guys,” Billy shouted, jumping to his feet. “Take it down a notch. You don’t want to scare the goats.”
But Teddy and Jack Wolf were two boys who only knew how to take it up a notch. They came flying into the middle of the yard, circling the goats and waving their sticks.
“He skates across the rink,” Jack shouted, running toward Grady, “and comes face-to-face with the goalie.”
Grady’s eyes grew wide with fear and he bleated loudly as Jack barreled up to him, his hockey stick orbiting above his head.
“But then Teddy comes in to defend the goal,” the other brother yelled. “He body checks Jack! No score!”
The two boys surrounded Grady, who spun in a circle as he tried to follow their whirling actions. But goats weren’t designed to spin in circles and after a few turns, Grady could no longer walk in a straight line and zigzagged his way over to Beatrice.
“The goalie abandons the net!” Jack screamed, shooting an imaginary puck into an imaginary net.
“He shoots, he scores!” Teddy said, raising his small stick above his head in victory. The two boys jumped up and down so long that eventually they fell down in a heap and started rolling around on the grass, while Amber twirled in crazy circles around the yard. She ran right up to Grady and in her loudest voice shrieked in his ear.
“Our team won!” she hollered. “And now Princess Hat Trick rules the whole ice rink universe!” With that, she let out a shrill scream that could probably be heard in all the ice rinks in the universe. It was more than poor Grady could take, and with a giant leap, he bolted for the hole in the fence and started burrowing through it into the Brownstone yard. Seeing him take off like that alarmed Beatrice, who followed in close pursuit.
“Hey, Grady,” the Hoove called. “Don’t panic, pal. You either, Beatrice! They’re just playing. That’s what human kids do.”
But as everyone knows, you can’t reason with an alarmed goat. And before Billy or the Hoove could stop them, both goats had charged the fence, found the hole, and wormed their way into the Brownstone backyard, bleating at the top of their lungs.
Rod’s mother came running out onto the back porch.
“Hey, scat!” she called to the goats. “Don’t you dare eat my flowers.”
But it was too late. Grady had found a bed of big blue hydrangeas and was ripping them to shreds. Beatrice was head butting the trunk of the fig tree in the center of their yard.
“Nooooooooo!” screamed Mrs. Brownstone. “Get out of my tree. And those are my prizewinning hydrangeas! Rod, come out here and help me!”
Grady didn’t listen, though, and kept head butting the tree trunk, rattling it so hard that the ripe figs shot off the tree in every direction like soft, juicy missiles flying through the air. One of them landed smack on Grady’s head, its juice running down into his mouth. Grady stopped dead in his tracks when he tasted the delicious fruit. Immediately his attention turned to the top of his head, and he reared up on his hind legs trying to flip the fig onto the ground. He looked like a break-dancer gone wild. Meanwhile, Rod had sauntered onto to the back porch, eating some cereal out of a plastic bowl.
“What’s the problem, Mom?” he said. But as soon as he finished the sentence, Beatrice stopped gobbling the hydrangeas and set her sites on cereal. She sniffed the air. Her nostrils flared at the scent of Cheerios in milk, and she bolted toward Rod. Her hooves stomped the earth and she bleated wildly, as only a goat seeking Cheerios can.
“Whoa!” Rod yelled. “Somebody stop that goat. It’s committing a 905 code violation!!!”
“What’s that?” his mother yelled.
“It means it’s attacking me!” he said. “Which is not only against the law, it’s scaring the pants off me!”
All the color drained from Rod’s face as Beatrice started clomping up the steps of the porch. Rod’s hands were shaking so much that the cereal flew out of them. As the Cheerios and milk flew through the air, a generous portion landed in Mrs. Brownstone’s hair.
“I just came from the beauty salon!” she screamed. “I was supposed to look glamorous for my office party tonight, but now I look like breakfast cereal!”
“You think you’ve got problems,” Rod yelled. “Look what’s happening to me!”
The other portion of the cereal and milk had spilled all over his sneakers, and Beatrice was having the time of her life licking his shoes. Rod the Bully was paralyzed with fear, pinned against the wall of his own house by a goat enjoying an afternoon snack. And now that Beatrice had licked all the Cheerios off his shoes, she was starting on the shoelaces, sucking them into her mouth like spaghetti noodles.
“I can see its tongue,” he screamed. “I’ll never wear these shoes again.”
“Stop complaining and help me catch them!” his mother said, running down the steps and onto the grass.
“He’s scared of animals,” Amber yelled, twirling by the fig tree. “But Princess Hat Trick isn’t!”
“Rod’s a scaredy-cat!” Jack Wolf hollered.
“Big, tough scaredy-cat!” his brother Teddy echoed.
“I am not, you little punks,” Rod shouted. “It’s just that … I … I … have to call the police. This is a job for law enforcement!”
“Billy! Did you hear that?” the Hoove shouted. “The big jerk is calling the police!”
“No! Don’t call the police!” Billy yelled to Rod, scurrying through the hole in the fence. “They’re just goats. We’ll catch them.”
But that was easier said than done. Grady and Beatrice played a clever game of hide-and-seek in the Brownstone backyard, ducking behind the hedges, the toolshed, even the lawn furniture. They were impossible to catch. Every time Billy got close, Jack and Teddy would grab them around the neck and try to ride them like small ponies. This did not sit well with the goats.
Billy’s whole family came over to help. Bennett tried to slow Jack and Teddy down, which was as difficult as capturing the goats.
“Boys,” he said. “You cannot ride goats. That’s why they do not make goat saddles.”
“But we want to!” Jack protested.
“There are many things we want to do in life,” Bennett explained, leaning over to look Jack right in the eyes. “For example, I would like to clean the teeth of every person in America, but that’s just not practical.”
Bennett was so involved in trying to get Jack to follow his logic, that he didn’t see Grady approaching. Both of Grady’s goat eyes were focused on only one thing — the delicious looking toupee resting like a bird’s nest on the top of Bennett’s head. In one swift movement, Grady shot his tongue out of his mouth and whipped off Bennett’s wig, sucking the whole hairy mess into his mouth in one gulp. Bennett’s hands flew to his suddenly bald head and a look of horror
came over his face. That look was matched by the shock on Jack’s face.
“Wow!” he screamed. “The goat’s got your hair. Here, Mr. Goat, take mine, too!”
Fortunately, Billy’s mom had arrived in time to try to grab the toupee out of Grady’s mouth.
“Give that back, you naughty goat,” she said. “It’s not polite to eat somebody else’s hair.”
She pulled on the toupee, and so did Grady. It was perhaps the strangest tug of war in the history of human-goat interactions.
Billy had been frantically chasing Beatrice, but when he saw his mom in battle with Grady, he joined in to help. Grabbing her around the waist, he tugged hard, but Grady had dug in his hooves and was stronger than the two of them.
“Help us, Bennett,” Mrs. Broccoli-Fielding called.
“I’ll help, too!” Amber cried.
“Us, too,” Jack and Teddy said.
Before long, a chain of six humans had formed to try to yank Bennett’s toupee away from one goat. It was too much for Grady, and at last, he opened his mouth and gave up the saliva-soaked hair.
“Yay! We won!” Amber said and started twirling around the backyard again.
“Don’t worry, dear,” Billy’s mom said to Bennett as he looked at his forlorn wig. “I’ll wash it on the delicate cycle.”
Breeze did not get involved in any of the goat drama. She just stood by and called various friends on her phone giving them a play-by-play of the bizarre backyard chaos.
Grady and Beatrice simply refused to be caught. And to make matters worse, Jack and Teddy Wolf, accompanied by her highness, Princess Hat Trick, continued to be fireballs of energy. Every time anyone would come close to cornering one of the goats, Jack would scream. “GOOOAAAALLLL!” and Teddy would stomp his feet and shake his booty in a victory dance, startling the cornered goat into a fit of sneezes before sending it running across the yard.
How to Scare the Pants Off Your Pets Page 7
