The Case of the Missing Birddog

by John R. Erickson

Slim was losing his patience. “Hank, reckon you could do something that would make this crowbait move?”

  Heh heh. Sure. No question about it. Not only could I do something, but I would enjoy doing it. Have we mentioned my Position on Horses? I don’t like ’em, never have.

  I slipped up behind the crowbait, the big cowardly crowbait, and took aim at his big fat bohun­kus. Flood tubes one and four, and plot a solution. We have a solution light! Ready, aim, FIRE!”

  Heh heh. We call this Helping Horsie Move, and fellers, he moved. Once he felt the grisp of my teeth digging into his haunch, he went airborne and flew right into the middle of the plum thicket. Old Slim lost his left stirrup and had to claw leather and hang on to the saddle horn to stay aboard.

  And sure enough, something came flying out of the thicket. Maybe you think it was a jackrabbit, or stray badger, or even the Birdly Wonder himself. Nope. Remember that discussion Drover and I had held about whether the scent was “hoggy” or “doggy”? And remember that I had argued and insisted that it was “hoggy”?

  Well, it was, and guess what came out. Six squealing, screaming little hoglets . . . piglets . . . piggies . . . six baby pigs, shall we say, and they scattered in all directions. That was the good part. The bad part followed a moment later when . . . YIPES! . . . when a huge three-hundred-pound mother hog came crashing out of the thicket, and fellers, she looked mad enough to eat somebody and mean enough to do it.

  Yes, it was every dog’s worse nightmare, a huge inflamed wild hog momma. She glared up at Slim and Snips with flaming piggish eyes, grunted, and snapped her jaws, which were armed with long sharp tushes. Tusks. Tuskes. Teeth, big teeth.

  For a moment of heartbeats, she and Slim stared into each other’s eyeballs, and Slim had just enough time to say, “Boys, I think we have worn out our welcome.”

  He had that right. Momma Hog came flying out of the thicket, uttering horrible murderous squeals, and took aim at Snips.

  Did I say that Snips was fat and lazy? Well, he might have been fat and lazy, but he sure didn’t move fat and lazy. In the blink of an eye, he swapped ends and crashed his way out of the plum thicket. Once out of the brush, he dropped his head between his front legs and went bucking across the pasture, with Momma Hog right on his heels.

  As they crested the top of a sandhill to the east, I got my last glimpse of poor Slim. He’d lost one rein and both stirrups, was sprawled across the saddle like a sack of potatoes, and was hanging on to Snips’s neck for dear life, looking back with moon eyes, and yelling, “Hyah! Hyah!” at Momma Hog.

  Whew! Boy, we had sure dodged a bullet there. I mean, I felt terrible that Slim had . . . well, been foolish enough to ride into that thicket, I mean, he should have waited and let us dogs go in first to, uh, test the situation, but no, he’d been in a hurry and . . . we’d tried to warn him that the thicket might contain something large and danger­ous, right? I had done my best to . . .

  I glanced around for Drover. At first I saw no sign of him, but then my keen eyes picked up a flash of white on the other side of the thicket. I moved around to get a better look and saw . . . hmmm . . . the hiney and stub tail of a dog sticking up, only the front half of his body was . . . missing.

  Holy smokes, had the wild hog taken a slash at little Drover and cut him in half? That certainly appeared to be the case. I rushed over to the spot, expecting to see a ghastly scene, with hair and gore and puddles of blood.

  “Drover, don’t move, you’ve been cut in half! Lie still and don’t try to talk. Where’s your head?”

  I heard his faint reply. “I’m not sure. Every­thing’s dark.”

  “You’re losing consciousness. Fight it, Drover, try to stay awake. I’ve got to find your head. Do you have any idea where it went?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Just lie still and don’t talk. If I can find your head, maybe we can stick you back together and save you.”

  “I think my head’s here with me.”

  “Oh, good. For a minute there I was afraid it had rolled off somewhere. Don’t give up hope, son. Modern medicine performs miracles every day.”

  “Help! The darkness is closing in!”

  “Fight it, Drover. Don’t give up. Can you give me some hints? If your head is there with you, just tell me where you are.”

  “Well, let’s see. I think I’m in a hole.”

  HUH?

  It was then that I noticed . . . did you think that Drover had been cut in half? Ha, ha. No, if he’d been cut in half, we wouldn’t have been carrying on a conversation, see, because . . .

  He’d dug the top half of his body into a sand hole, is what he’d done, and to a casual observer it might have appeared that . . . well . . . the lower half of his body was just . . . standing there. Without a head. Or shoulders or front legs.

  I marched over to him and gave him a kick in the behind. “You can come out now, Drover. I’ve solved the Mystery of the Severed Head.”

  He pulled himself out and shook the sand off his carcass. “Oh, hi. Gosh, there for a minute, I thought . . .”

  “You thought you’d been decaffeinated, but you ignored one tiny detail. At the first sign of danger, you burrowed the top half of your body into the sand. In cowardly fashion, you fled from Reality.”

  “Yeah, and boy, she sure looked mean. I guess she was a wild hog.”

  “Well, she thought she was wild . . . until I got done with her.”

  Drover’s eyes widened. “You mean . . . you whipped her?”

  “Oh, sure. She was nothing but an ugly pig, Drover, and I told her so.”

  “No fooling?”

  “Yes, and then I gave her the thrashing she so richly deserved. I guess you heard all that squealing? She learned a bitter lesson and I don’t think we’ll be seeing anymore of her.” It was then that I noticed the piglets. They had come together, put their heads to the center, and piled on top of each other. “Well, look at this, Drover. A pile of little piggies. Let’s have a look.”

  I marched over to them, but Drover didn’t move. “You know, that might not be such a great idea. I mean, if . . .”

  “Oh, rubbish. That old hag of a hog wouldn’t dare . . .”

  HUH?

  Chapter Ten: Oh No! The Killer Hog Appears!

  She’d come back.

  I looked into her face and almost fainted. Her tiny piggish eyes glistened with an unhealthy light and she was snapping those powerful jaws open and shut. I swallowed hard and moved my gaze over the rest of her body. She was BIG—tall and wide, built like an iron safe and covered with stiff bristles of hair.

  On instinct, I looked for a weakness I might be able to exploit if . . . well, if things got out of hand, shall we say. All animals have a weak spot, right? That’s the way it’s supposed to work, but you show me the weakness in a three-hundred-pound hog.

  They don’t have one. Their bodies are thick, their hair is thick, their skin is thick, their skulls are thick. You bite them and they don’t feel it. You hit them and they don’t even notice. You claw them and it doesn’t even scratch the skin.

  Gulp.

  Clearly this was the wrong time to seek a, uh, military solution to our problem. Perhaps charm and diplomacy would work.

  I beamed up my most sincere smile of friendliness and sincerity. “Why, Mrs. Hog, what a pleas­ant surprise! We thought . . . that is, Drover and I thought . . . that’s Drover over there, my assistant . . . uh . . . Drover, meet Mrs. Hog . . . we thought you had left your piggies . . . kids . . . children . . . not that you had abandoned them, no no, only that you had, well, left them for a while, don’t you see, and we were just . . .”

  She stared at me and uttered a noise: “Rrrrunt, rrrrrunt.”

  My mouth was very dry. I licked my lips and smiled and gestured toward the stack of hoggies, the ugliest collection of creatures I had ever laid eyes on.


  “They’re . . . uh . . . awfully cute. Very cute. Darling.”

  “Rrrrrunt, rrrrunt.”

  “Okay, no doubt you’re wondering what we’re doing here, two dogs alone with your . . .” I shot a glance at the pile of piggies. Several of them had lifted their heads and were looking at me. Gag! How could anyone love something that ugly? “. . . alone with these darling little piglets. I think I can explain everything, honest.”

  I eased a paw over to the pile and patted one of them on the back. He squealed and bit me. “Youch! My goodness, ha ha, he’s a feisty little guy, isn’t he? Ha, ha. Anyway, we saw you leave a while ago, chasing the, uh, horse and so forth, and we said to ourselves, we said, ‘By George, we’d better rush over there and guard her children from the . . .’”

  I glanced around, hoping to find something that would keep my story moving, you know, something that might draw her attention away from me. Nothing. But then my gaze drifted up to the sky, and there I saw . . . aha! Yes, two big black birds wheeling above us, and they even appeared to be coming in for a landing.

  Perfect!

  I licked my dry lips and continued. “And so I said to Drover, ‘Drover, by George, we had better get over there and protect Mrs. Hog’s children from an attack by those two huge hungry eagles.’”

  I pointed to the sky. Her gaze followed my point.

  “Rrrunt, rrrunt.”

  I plunged on. “As you surely know, ma’am, your eagles and your hawks and your owls are very fond of . . . well, pork chops, shall we say.”

  “Rrrrrrrunt?”

  “Oh yes, they dearly love your various cuts of pork, whereas we dogs . . . ha, ha, well, we wouldn’t even think of harming a little . . . ” I patted another of the homely little things on the . . . good grief, he bit me too! “Avast, you little Martian!” I turned a quick smile on Momma. “I mean, heh heh, they’re shy around strangers, aren’t they? But cute, very cute.”

  I swallowed the cotton in my throat and mushed on. “Anyway, we perceived that there was some threat, a huge threat, to your . . . ” I pointed to the buzzards, who were gliding in for a landing. “There, you see? Here they come, even as we speak. Eagles.”

  As you might have guessed, it was Wallace and Junior, the buzzards, and they couldn’t have come at a better time. Even at a distance, I could see the crazed smile on Wallace’s face, and could hear him yelling.

  “Flaps down, son! Bring ’er down easy and watch out for trees!” He glided in, clipped a sagebrush, did two flips in the air, hit the ground with a thud, and rolled to a stop. He didn’t miss a beat, but leaped to his feet and came hopping over to us. Behind him, Junior crashed beak-first into the sand.

  Momma Hog grunted and took a step backward.

  Here came the old man. “Well, I see we ain’t too late for a nice doggie dinner, and yes, this is indeed a happy day in our lives, and Junior, I get first dibs on the drumsticks.” He grinned a wild grin and rubbed his wings together. “Hello, dog, looks like y’all have fell on hard times, but we sure appreciate the business, we truly do. Me and Junior ain’t had but three scraps of dead snake in two weeks, and, son, you’d best get yourself over here, I ain’t sure I can hold myself back.”

  Junior came waddling up, huffing and puffing and spitting sand. “H-h-here I c-c-come, P-pa, and oh m-m-my g-g-g-goodness, it’s our d-d-d-doggie friend.” He gave me a shy grin and waved his wing. “H-h-hi there, d-d-d-doggie.”

  I dipped my head in greeting. “How’s it going, Junior?”

  “Oh w-w-well, b-b-busy, b-b-busy.”

  Wallace stuck his beak into my face. “I’ll tell you how it’s going, puppy dog. Times is hard. Our business is off thirty percent. Last month, road kill was down forty-two percent. We’re just a-struggling to make ends meet, is how hard our life is.”

  “W-w-well P-pa, w-we d-did f-f-find that uh uh d-d-dead skunk t-t-two days ago, days ago.”

  Wallace gave him a glare. “I ain’t a-counting that skunk, Junior. It had been smushed by a big old truck and there wasn’t nothing left but hair and grease, and you ate the grease.”

  “W-w-w-well, I g-g-got there f-f-first.”

  “You got there first because you cheated, is how you done it.” Wallace turned to me. “He cheated. My own son, my own flesh and blood cheated me out of a dandy little puddle of skunk grease.”

  “N-n-n-no, I g-g-got there f-f-first because y-y-you s-stepped in a h-h-h-hole and f-f-fell down, fell down.”

  “I did not step in a hole, I have never stepped in a hole, you cheated your poor old daddy, I seen it with my very own eyes, and son, I haven’t yet got over the shock and dismay of . . .” He whirled back to me. “I’m running on skunk hair, is how bad times are, but I can see that business is fixing to pick up.” He jerked his head around to Momma Hog. “Well? What are you waiting for? Let’s get this thang started. We’ll settle for a fifty percent chunk of the deal.”

  “Rrrrrunt, rrrrunt!”

  “Okay, sixty-forty.” He turned back to me with wide eyes. “You know, that may be the ugliest woman I ever laid eyes on. You see them teeth? If I had such long old crooked teeth, I’d . . . what is she, some kind of go-rilla?”

  “She’s a wild hog.”

  “Huh. Well, she’s sure filled up with the ugly, ain’t she? If I was that ugly . . .” All at once a grin flashed across his beak. “Say there, neighbor, did you say she was a hog? Do you mean like a pig? Pork?” His eyes glittered and moved over to the pile of piggies. “Glory be, what do we have here?”

  “P-p-pa, y-y-you’d b-b-better w-w-watch what you s-s-say, watch what you say.”

  “Hush, son, I’m just a-thinking out loud, and the last time I checked, there wasn’t no laws against thinking.” He waddled over to the piggies. Momma Hog watched and bristled. “Why, ain’t they the cutest little thangs you ever saw? How precious! And just the right size for a sandwich.”

  “P-p-p-pa, I think y-y-y-you’d b-b-better . . .”

  “You know, Junior, we come here with dog on our minds, but it never hurts to shop around.” He leaned over and gave the piggies a big buzzardly smile. “Hi. How y’all? Son, the trouble with dog meat is it’s awful tough and stringy.”

  “P-p-pa, d-d-don’t g-g-get g-g-g-greedy.”

  “I ain’t greedy, I’ve never been greedy, it ain’t my nature. All I’m saying is . . .” He licked his chops and gave Junior a wink. “Son, I have never met a pig that could count past five, and there’s six little piggies in this pile. Do you reckon she’d miss just one?”

  Junior rolled his eyes. “P-p-pa, d-d-don’t d-do this. Y-y-you’re f-f-fixing to . . .”

  “I’m just a-talking out loud, son, and there’s no harm in that.” He licked his beak and shot a cunning glance over to Momma Hog. “Now if I was to pick up one of these little fellers and kindly wander around behind this plum thicket, and if you was to meet me over there behind the thicket, I’ve got a hunch that . . .”

  “P-p-pa, p-p-please.”

  “Son, she’s got more children than she can take care of. Why, you might even say that we’d be doing her a favor.” All at once he turned to me. “What do you think, dog? We could always save you for another day.”

  “It’ll work, Wallace, great idea. She’d never miss one. I mean, she just a pig, right? And it’s com­mon knowledge that pigs can’t count past five.”

  He draped his wing over my shoulder. “Dog, all these years I have read you wrong, I’ve thought you was just a dumb dog, but all at once, you’re speaking truth and wisdom. Did you hear what he said, Junior? Our luck is fixing to change.”

  Junior gave his head a sad shake. “Y-y-yeah, it’s f-f-fixing to ch-change, all r-r-r-right, and I’ve g-g-g-g-g-got a p-p-p-pretty g-g-g-g-good idea . . .”

  Wallace scowled. “Just spit it out, son, time’s a-wasting. Speak your mind, but hurry.”

  “I’ve g-g-got an idea
wh-wh-wh . . . oh, j-just s-s-s-skip it, skip it.”

  Wallace shrugged and looked at me. “He’s always been slow, that boy has. Got it from his momma. All the birds on that side of the tree was . . .” He tapped himself on the head. Then a sly grin slithered across his beak. “Oh my goodness, is that a giraffe walking over yonder? Lookie there!”

  All eyes turned to the east—even the eyes of Momma Hog. See, this was part of Wallace’s plan for getting a pork sandwich. When Momma Hog’s eyes moved away, Wallace sprang into action. He grabbed up one of the little piggies in his clawed foot and started hopping away on one leg.

  “Here we go, son! Meet you on the other side of the bushes, and hurry, first chance you get!”

  At that point, things started happening fast. The little piggy let out the most incredible blurdcuddling squeal you can imagine, and that DID get Momma’s attention. Her head shot around and her eyes focused on the hopping buzzard.

  “Rrrrrunt, rrrrrunt!”

  Maybe you thought pigs were slow, just because they’re big. Ha. In the blink of an eye, that angry mother went from a dead stop to a dead run, and she was on top of Wallace before he even knew she was coming. WHAM! Feathers flew in all directions, and so did Old Man Wallace.

  “Hyah, pig, hyah! Junior, get yourself over here and help your poor old . . . son, this woman has lost her mind and you’re fixing to lose your pa if you don’t . . . hyah, pig, sooey!”

  Junior shook his head and started taxiing into the wind. “I t-t-tried to t-t-tell you, P-p-pa, b-b-but y-y-you w-w-w-wouldn’t l-listen, wouldn’t listen. G-g-good l-l-luck.”

  “Good luck, my foot! Junior, you get yourself . . .”

  Suddenly I saw our opportunity to make a run for it. I rushed over to—can you guess what Drover had been doing through all this? He had gone back to the hole in the sand and had stuck his head in it. I whopped him on the bohunkus and yelled, “Come on, Drover! Hit Full Flames and let’s get out of here!”

  Chapter Eleven: The Giant Snout-Nosed Quail