by Duncan Ball
“Okay,” he gasped, shaking his tail and trying to get rid of the sheepdog, “we’re saved. Now let go! Let go!”
Hamish was so frightened that Selby’s yelling made him panic and he bit harder.
“Stop it! Yoooooooowwwwwwww!” Selby yelled, jumping to his feet and tearing along, looking back at Hamish and not noticing that Bogusville Creek had taken them right to Bogusville and that he and Hamish were headed straight for the finish line of the Flat-Out Four-Footed Dog Race. “Yipe! Yiiii! Yooooowww!”
“And look at that!” Postie Paterson yelled, as the crowd cheered and Selby and Hamish crossed the finish line. “Selby’s won the race! He wins this year’s grand prize — a two-year supply of Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits!”
“Crikey!” Selby mumbled to himself as he finally prised Hamish loose from his tail. “Why is it I only seem to win when I’m trying to lose?”
In the Spirit of Things
“This house is haunted,” Mrs Trifle said one evening as she and Dr Trifle sat watching a TV program called Australian Spirits, Then and Now, which was hosted by the famous ghost hunter, Myrene Spleen. “I keep hearing footsteps running in the hall at night and there’s no one there. I’m sure it’s a ghost.”
“It’s probably just Selby getting up to nibble a dog biscuit,” Dr Trifle said.
Selby’s ears shot up like rockets.
“I’m not the one making the noises,” he thought. “At night I tiptoe around like a cat so I won’t wake the Trifles. But of course it can’t be a ghost because there aren’t any such things.”
“It can’t be Selby,” Mrs Trifle said. “He tiptoes around like a cat. No, I think it’s a ghost and I’m going to ring Myrene right now and see what she can do about it.”
Three days later Myrene Spleen raced down the Trifles’ driveway carrying a large box that said Ghost Hunter’s Kit on the top. “Spleen’s the name and spooks are my game,” she said, giving Mrs Trifle a bonecrushing handshake. “Take me to the spirit spot and I’ll get to the bottom of this, quick smart.”
“Whatever it is, it runs up and down the hall and makes a racket,” Mrs Trifle said.
“That’s spook-like behaviour all right,” Myrene said, snatching a bucket from the box. “And I can feel its presence.”
“You can feel a ghost?” Dr Trifle said, looking at his hands.
“I get all tingly when there’s a spook around,” Myrene said with a shiver. “By the way, I did some research before I came to Bogusville and it’s my guess you’re being haunted by none other than the ghost of Brumby Bill.”
“Brumby Bill?” Dr Trifle said. “But he built the first house in Bogusville. He’s been dead for years,” he added, suddenly realising what he’d said.
“Precisely. He came to this area a hundred years ago with his dog to get away from the city. Gradually other people settled here and built houses,” Myrene said. “You don’t have to tell me about Brumby Bill, I know his story back to front.”
“But why would he want to haunt us?” Mrs Trifle asked, wondering why anyone would want to know a story back to front.
“My theory is that he hates what Bogusville has become.”
“But Bogusville hasn’t become anything,” Mrs Trifle said. “It’s just another country town.”
“It was peaceful bush when Brumby Bill lived here and now he thinks it’s ruined. And who better to haunt than you, the mayor,” Myrene said, pouring a tin of white paint in the bucket. “He thinks that if he can scare you away then the whole town will pack up and go. Would you like him exorcised?”
“Heavens no. He gets quite enough exercise dashing up and down the hall.”
“Not exercise, exorcise. Exorcism is just a fancy word for getting rid of a spirit. How about it?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so,” Mrs Trifle said, wondering why ghost hunters didn’t use simple words like everyone else.
“Won’t you need television cameras and electronic ghost sensors and super-sensitive, quadro-gyric, scintillating, movement-activated microphones?” asked Dr Trifle who liked fancy words as much as anyone.
“The best way to catch a spook is to splash him with a bucket of paint,” Myrene said. “It’s an old-fashioned method but it usually works.”
“Won’t the paint go right through him?” Mrs Trifle asked, wondering how she would ever clean the paint out of her carpets.
“Not if it catches him when he’s not looking. I’ll wait till I feel his presence with my psychic powers and then pull the rope that tips the bucket. Glop, slop — down comes the paint. Then I’ll snap the photo. Ghosts don’t like to be photographed. He won’t be back after that. And don’t worry about your carpets,” Myrene added. “This paint washes off in water.”
“I guess it’s worth a try,” Mrs Trifle said. “Anything to get a good night’s sleep.”
“That’s the spirit!” Myrene said, giggling after she said it. “Now lock that dog out so he won’t get in the way. And you and Dr Trifle can go to bed. I’ll do the rest.”
“Ghosts, schmosts,” Selby said as he lay under a bush in the front garden. “Locked out of my own house just because of a silly ghost hunt. If I don’t freeze out here, I’ll starve. I’m so hungry I could even eat a Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuit!”
Selby climbed up the jacaranda next to the side window and peered in at the ghost hunter who sat in the hall with her camera in one hand and the rope in the other.
“Psychic powers, piffle!” Selby thought. “The woman’s sound asleep and she thinks she’s going to catch a ghost. What rubbish! Whether or not she knows it,” Selby added, “the Trifles left this window unlocked and Myrene’s about to have a visitor.”
Selby eased himself onto the window ledge and then slowly raised the window. He leaned in and put a leg in front of Myrene’s face, waving his paw in front of her.
“A ghost could be doing a tapdance in front of her and she’d sleep through it,” he thought. “That does it, I’m going in for a bite to eat, ghost hunt or no ghost hunt.”
Selby crept down the hall to the kitchen and quietly crunched a couple of dog biscuits.
“If only I could just stay inside for the night,” he thought. “Only then the Trifles would figure out that I opened an unlocked window and climbed in. They’d know they weren’t dealing with an ordinary dog and it would be just a matter of time till my (gulp) secret would be out. Oh, well, out in the cold I go.”
Selby was heading back down the hall when the sleeping Myrene Spleen suddenly jumped to her feet and yelled, “I’ve got the feeling! I’ve got the feeling! He’s here!” And with this she pulled the rope.
“Help!” Selby screamed as the paint hit him with a glop and a slop and Myrene’s camera flashed at the same time. “Get me out of here!”
He tore down the hall, hurled himself through the air — narrowly missing the screaming woman — and dived out the open window.
“I’m finished!” he said, hosing off the paint with the garden sprinkler. “It’s over. As soon as they look at that photo they’ll know that I climbed a tree and broke in through the hall window. I’m done. I’d better go and confess right now.”
Selby slunk towards the front door just as Myrene burst out on the way to her car.
“Look at the dog!” she screamed, waving a photograph at Dr and Mrs Trifle. “I was wrong. It wasn’t the ghost of Brumby Bill. It was the ghost of Brumby Bill’s dog!”
Selby stared at the picture of himself, covered in paint, leaping through the air towards the window.
“It’s the first dog ghost that’s ever been photographed! And a talking dog ghost, too! Did you hear him say, ‘Get me out of here!?’ He won’t be back to haunt you. This is great! It’ll be my best TV show yet!”
“That was a close call,” Selby thought as he lay on the hall carpet a little later with his eyes closed, ready for sleep. “I can’t wait to see Myrene Spleen on TV talking about the dog ghost and holding up that picture of me covered in paint. Well, at least I can sleep in the house aga
in (yawn) now that this ghost nonsense is over.”
Selby listened as the footsteps walked along the hall, passing so close to his head that he felt a slight breeze from the moving legs.
“That’ll be Dr Trifle (yawn) heading for the kitchen to get a drink of water,” he thought. “He often does that in the middle of the night.”
Had Selby lifted his head at that moment and opened his eyes to look down the darkened hall, searching for the shape of Dr Trifle hurrying along in his dressing-gown; had he just lifted one eyelid a crack, as he did when he didn’t want anyone to know he was peeking, instead of falling into a deep sleep, he’d have seen that there was no one there.
A Tip for Selby
There were times when being the only talking, reading and writing dog in Australia — and as far as he knew, in the whole world — and trying to keep it a secret, was not easy. But it was a secret that Selby was determined to keep even if it killed him. On October 3rd it nearly did …
October 3rd was clean-up day in Bogusville and Dr and Mrs Trifle had put out some old, broken furniture to be taken to the tip. It was hot and Selby was walking towards the shade of a big tree when he looked in the open drawer of an old cupboard. There, on the bottom of the drawer, was a page from a copy of the Bogusville Banner with his favourite comic strip, Wonderful Wanda, Maker of Music. Selby put his head in the drawer to read it and then he climbed right in to get out of the sun.
Wonderful Wanda was about a woman who travelled back and forth through time trying to catch the villain who had stolen her grand piano when she was a girl. The villain, Larry Low-Note, had been frightened by a trombone when he was a baby and ever since he’d hated music. He promised to put a stop to all music; not only in the present but in the past and the future as well.
“I will destroy all musical instruments,” Larry Low-Note yelled as he twirled his fingers around his black moustache and stomped a violin to matchsticks. “That will put an end to all this musical nonsense forever! Ha ha ha! He he he!”
“I must stop that villain,” Wanda said, tearing through time in a spaceship that looked like a kettledrum. “If there is no music there will be no joy. The hearts of people will shrivel like flowers that fall in the desert.”
And whenever she said this, in every comic strip, Selby felt a tear come into his eye and his nose begin to run.
“Don’t worry, Wanda,” Selby said. “You’ll fix that scoundrel.”
And in every episode Wanda caught up to Larry Low-Note and kept him from destroying another musical instrument. But in every episode Larry tricked her and she was captured and left to die a terrible death. In the beginning of the next episode Wanda always escaped and went on with the chase.
Selby read the comic strip in the cupboard. In the end, Larry Low-Note captured her when she fell through some branches on the ground and was trapped in an orchestra pit. He tied her up and gave her to a tribe of cannibals who put her in a pot.
“It’s all right, Wanda,” Selby said, knowing that she’d pull out the magic conductor’s baton she kept in her boot and get free. “You’ll get away. I know, I’ve read the next episode.”
Just then the cupboard tipped backward and the drawer slammed shut. Selby felt himself being lifted up onto the council truck and then bouncing along towards the Bogusville tip.
“Crumbs,” Selby said, pushing on the drawer but not being able to open it because the cupboard was lying on its front. “Trapped like a rat. Let’s not panic now. Hmmmmmmmmm … I wonder how Wanda would get out of this one? I remember the time she was trapped in a pit of cobras and she played her flute to keep them from biting her. No, that won’t do me much good. First of all I don’t have a flute. Secondly, there aren’t any cobras around. Let’s see now … Then there was the time she was tied to the railway tracks and she made a loud whistle with a blade of grass. The engine driver thought there was another train coming so he stopped the train just in time. No,” he said calmly, “that’s not much good to me either. Hmmmmmmmm. I’m not going to panic. There must be a way.”
Selby felt the truck stop.
“And then there was the time …” Selby thought as he suddenly remembered that the Bogusville tip was at the bottom of a cliff and that the truck would soon dump everything over the edge, including the cupboard.
“But what am I talking about!” he screamed. “Wonderful Wanda is just someone in a comic strip! I’m a real, live, thinking and feeling dog and I’m about to be dumped over a cliff! It’s time to panic! Help! I don’t want to die! Save me!”
Selby heard the driver get out of the truck and walk around to the back.
“What’s going on here?” the driver said to a metal filing cabinet. “Who’s yelling for help?”
“I am,” Selby said, knowing he was giving away his secret and that he would probably be the Trifles’ servant for life but not caring because it was better to be a live servant than a dead dog with a secret.
“The filing cabinet or the shopping trolley?” the puzzled driver asked.
“Neither,” Selby said. “The cupboard.”
“Now wait just a minute,” the driver said. “Cupboards can’t talk.”
“Neither can filing cabinets and shopping trolleys, you nit,” Selby said. “But this one has a dog in it so open the drawer and let me out before I suffocate.”
The driver turned the cupboard over and very carefully opened the drawer.
“Crikey!” he said, grabbing Selby by the collar. “You really are a talking dog! I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it with my own ears. I’ll be rich! Say something, dog.”
“Bow wow wow,” Selby said, trying to keep his secret now that he wasn’t about to be dumped over the cliff.
“Don’t give me that bow wow wow rubbish,” the driver said, giving Selby a good shake. “Give me some proper English. You can speak it and I know you can so don’t try to kid me.”
“Let go of me, you drongo!” Selby said, pulling loose and jumping down from the truck. “You’ll never catch me now! And don’t bother telling anyone you’ve seen a talking dog because nobody’s going to believe you.”
Just then the truck started to roll and the driver found that his belt buckle was caught in the back. To make matters worse, it was headed straight for the cliff.
“Help!” the driver screamed, trying to pull his buckle loose as he tiptoed madly after the truck. “Help! Please don’t let me go over the cliff!”
Selby thought for a second and then ran after the runaway truck and jumped into the cabin. He started pulling knobs and levers but the truck hurtled on towards the cliff, going faster and faster.
Suddenly he remembered a TV show he’d seen called All About Cars, and he jumped down to the floor and pulled up the handbrake. The truck screeched to a stop only a centimetre from the edge of the cliff.
“Sheeeesh!” Selby said, hopping out and running for home, leaving the driver to untangle his belt buckle. “That was too close for comfort.”
That evening, Mrs Trifle came home very tired.
“I need a holiday,” she told Dr Trifle while Selby lay on the latest copy of the Bogusville Banner secretly reading Wonderful Wanda, Maker of Music. “I must be working too hard. Today one of the council truck drivers said he saw a talking dog so I gave him a month off work, poor man. If I don’t take some time off soon,” she said, looking over at Selby, “I’ll be seeing talking dogs too.”
“Little does she know,” Selby thought and he squinted his eyes so she couldn’t see them moving as he finished reading Wonderful Wanda, “that she’s looking at one.”
Selby Gagged
The good news was that Gary Gaggs, the corniest comedian in Australia, was back in Bogusville to do his comedy act at the Bogusville School of Arts Banquet. The bad news was that he was staying with Dr and Mrs Trifle.
“Oh, woe woe woe,” Selby thought as Dr Trifle greeted his old friend at the door. “Of all the places to stay in Bogusville, why, oh why, oh why, does he have to stay her
e?”
“You’re looking great, Blinky!” Gary said, using Dr Trifle’s old nickname and shaking his hand furiously. “As for me, I just flew in from Perth and my arms are tired! Woo woo woo!”
Every time Gary told a joke he strutted around like a rooster, pumping his elbows up and down and saying, “Woo woo woo!”
“His jokes are absolutely awful!” Selby thought. “But the problem is — it’s all I can do to keep from laughing at them. And if I ever laughed — if I ever even smiled — my secret would be out! I’ve got to get out of here quick!”
Selby dashed for the door but Gary reached out and grabbed him by the collar.
“Selby’s a real locksmith dog,” Gary said, patting him on the head.
“A locksmith dog?” Dr Trifle asked.
“Yes. He just made a bolt for the door! Woo woo woo!” Gary boomed. “Seriously though, I had a kelpie once and I put him in some sheepdog trials.”
“Is that so?” Dr Trifle said. “How’d he do?”
“He was found not guilty! Woo woo woo!” Gary laughed. “But seriously, I was going to sell him but he got his tail caught in a gate. I had to sell him wholesale because I couldn’t retail him! Woo woo woo!”
“Oh, that’s very funny,” Dr Trifle said instead of laughing. “But you never really had a dog, did you Gary?”
“I had a dog just like your Selby but he got lost.”
“Isn’t that sad. What did you do?”
“Nothing. I was going to put an ad in the newspaper but I knew it wouldn’t do any good.”
“Why not?”
“Because he couldn’t read! Woo woo woo!” Gary screeched, pumping his arms up and down, giving Selby time to dart out the door and into the bushes before he laughed. “Hey! Why don’t you bring Selby to the banquet tonight and I can tell some more dog gags?”
That night the Trifles sat at the end of a long table next to Gary Gaggs. Selby was on Mrs Trifle’s lap watching as the comedian ate masses of food, lots of it falling on his checked shirt.
