The Case of the Monkey Burglar

by John R. Erickson

  Some people never learn, or if they learn, it has to be in the hardest possible way. Slim seemed to be one of those people. Now, if he had consulted his dogs, if he had listened to my advice . . . oh, well. We’ve already touched on that, and there’s no more to be said.

  The worst part of it was that we dogs would have to listen to him moan and gripe for three long days. It would a tough assignment for those of us in the Security Division, as we shared Slim’s pain and eased him through this difficult period in his life. Drover and I would have our hands cut out for us.

  When I returned to the yard gate, Slim wasn’t there, but I found Drover making idle conversation with the cat. Pete.

  When he saw me approaching the gate, Kitty Kitty gave me one of his insolent smirks and said, “Well, well, Hankie the Wonderdog is here.”

  “You got that right, kitty. Out of the way.” I pushed him aside and managed to step on his tail, tee hee, which wasn’t exactly an accident. “Oops, sorry, Pete. If you’d find some other place to loaf, you wouldn’t get stepped on.” I marched up to Drover and gave him a stern glare. “What’s going on around here?”

  “Oh, hi. Are you talking to me?”

  “Correct. What’s going on around here?”

  “Oh, not much. Pete and I were just talking about the weather.”

  “I see. And what did you decide?”

  “Well, let me think.” He rolled his eyes around. “I think we decided that it’ll probably do whatever it does, and we’ll just wait and see.”

  “That’s very impressive, Drover.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How long did it take you and the cat to decide that the weather will do whatever it does?”

  “Oh . . . about fifteen minutes, I guess. We argued about it for a while.”

  “How interesting.”

  “Yeah, Pete said it was going to be hot and dry, but I said it would be dry and hot. Then we decided we didn’t know for sure.”

  “I see. Do I need to remind you that mingling with cats is against regulations?”

  “Well, we weren’t mingling. We were just talking.”

  Pete nodded. “That’s right, Hankie, we weren’t mingling.”

  “Stay out of this, kitty. This is dog business and nobody wants to hear what you have to say.” Back to Drover. “You were mingling, and unless you can come up with a good reason for mingling with a cat, this will have to go into my report.”

  “Oh, darn. Well, let me think.” He wadded up his face and seemed to be probing his tiny mind. “You know, I’m not real sure what ‘mingle’ means, but it rhymes with ‘tingle.’”

  “It rhymes with ‘tingle,’ but I don’t care.”

  “And ‘care’ rhymes with ‘underwear.’”

  Pete’s face lit up with a smile. “Good point, Drover! Why, with just a little imagination, we could compose a poem: ‘We tingle as we mingle, but I don’t care/’Cause Wonderdog Hankie lost his underwear.’”

  Does this strike you as silly and childish? It did me, but there’s more. Hang on while we change chapters.

  Chapter Three: An Important Lesson in Poetry

  If you recall, Pete the Barncat had composed a silly little poem. Do I dare repeat it? I guess it wouldn’t hurt.

  “We tingle as we mingle, but I don’t care/’Cause Wonderdog Hankie lost his underwear.”

  See? I told you it was silly, but Drover burst out with a giggle. “Tee hee. Oh, that’s a good one, Pete.”

  I marched over to the cat and gave him a snarl. “Okay, kitty, this has gone far enough. At this point, I have two words for you.”

  “Happy birthday?”

  “No.”

  “Merry Christmas?”

  “No.”

  “Great poem?”

  “No. My two words to you are . . . shove off, get lost, and beat it!”

  The cat fluttered his eyelids. “But Hankie, that’s seven words. Maybe you miscounted.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then let me explain.” I stuck my nose in his face and said, “ROOF!”

  Heh heh. That got him. You should have seen the little pest. My Air Horns Bark blasted his ears off and sent him rolling backwards, hissing and spitting.

  I love doing that. See, you have to be firm with these cats. When they start mouthing off, you don’t argue with ’em or try to be reasonable. You give ’em Air Horns right in the face. That will settle most arguments with a cat. And it’s great fun too.

  Well, that took care of my business with the cat, so I marched back to my assistant. “Okay, where were we?”

  “Well, let me see. I think you were talking about . . . poetry.”

  “Ah, yes. Poetry.” I began pacing back and forth in front of him. “It’s a very important subject, Drover, because we dogs take pride in our ability to compose verses. Cats try to cobble up a poem every now and then, but the result is always embarrassing.”

  “I thought it was pretty good.”

  “They have no talent for language.”

  “I liked the part about your underwear.”

  “They have no sense of meter or rhyme.”

  “I thought it was funny as heck.”

  I stopped pacing. “What?”

  Drover glanced around. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I thought I heard a voice.”

  “I’ll be derned. It wasn’t me.”

  I looked up into a tree nearby. “Hmmm. It must have been a bird.” I resumed pacing. “Dogs, on the other hand, seem to have a natural skill for composing delightful poems, and to demonstrate this, you give me a word and I’ll make up a poem about it.”

  “Any word?”

  “Any word at all. Give me your best shot.”

  “Well, let’s see. ‘Bulldozer.’”

  I pitched that one back and forth in my mind. “Tell you what, let’s try another one.”

  “‘Pork rinds.’”

  “That’s two words, Drover. Try to play by the rules.”

  “Sorry. ‘Leprosy.’”

  I stopped in my tracks. “‘Leprosy’! Who can make a rhyme with ‘leprosy’?”

  “Well, it’s a word.”

  “It’s not a word, it’s a disease. Diseases don’t count in this contest. Give me a normal, healthy American word.”

  He frowned. “Darn. Okay, here’s one. ‘Chrysanthemum.’”

  “That’s not an American word, it’s Chinese.”

  He gave me a devilish grin. “Yeah, and I’ll bet you can’t write a poem about it.”

  I marched a few steps away and gazed off into the distance. Drover had challenged my gifts as a poet. Was I dog enough to accept the challenge, or would I wilt under the terrible stress of composing verses about chrysanthemums? This would likely be the most difficult poetic venture I had ever attempted, and the odds against success were astrometrical.

  But my pride and reputation were at stake. I strode back to him and prepared to wipe that little smirk off his mouth. “All right, son, I accept your challenge.”

  He was stunned. I mean, when his eyes came up, they looked like two big moons with a fly in the center of each. “No fooling? You’re going to do a poem about chrysanthemums?”

  “Not just a poem, Drover. I’m going to raise the bar and make it even more difficult. I’m going to compose an entire song about chrysanthemums. It’s never been done before. Nobody has even dared to attempt it.”

  “Oh my gosh!”

  And with Drover watching in stunned silence, I wrote, composed, arranged, and performed this song, surely one of the most spectacular of my entire career.

  The Impossible Chrysanthemum Song

  Chrysanthemum flowers are round like a ball.

  They grow in the summer and bloom in the fall.

  Sometimes they’re yellow and sometimes they’re not.
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  Chrysanthemums usually live in a pot.

  If I were a flower, I’d want to announce

  That I had a name normal folks could pronounce.

  “Chrysos’” means gold if you happen to speak

  That musty old language that came from the Greeks.

  Chrysanthemum, chrysanthemum,

  A word you can’t say while you’re chew-ing your gum.

  This flower is pretty and pleasant to smell,

  But, man, it is really a booger to spell.

  If I took a notion to send a bouquet,

  I’d pick out a flower whose name I could say.

  See, what would you write, if you added a card?

  “Herewith a flower, the name is too hard

  To pronounce.”

  I think that chrysanthemums surely must be

  The loneliest flowers you ever will see.

  Why, even the insects avoid ’em too.

  Four-syllable flowers are harder to chew.

  Chrysanthemum, chrysanthemum,

  A word you can’t say while you’re chew-ing your gum.

  This flower is pretty and pleasant to smell,

  But, man, it is really a booger to spell.

  One more thing ’bout chrysanthemum’s name:

  It’s certain to drive all the poets insane.

  Try it yourself and give it some time,

  But you’ll never invent a chrysanthemum-rhyme.

  A song ’bout this flower’s impossible to make.

  Shakespeare himself would have gotten the shakes.

  Brave poets who tried it are now on the shelf,

  But Drover, take note: I’ve done it myself!

  Chrysanthemum, chrysanthemum,

  A word you can’t say while you’re chew-ing your gum.

  This flower is pretty and pleasant to smell,

  But, man, it is really a booger to spell.

  Pretty awesome song, huh? You bet. Even I was amazed. I turned to Drover and waited for him to burst into applause. He didn’t.

  “Hey, I just performed a song about chrysanthemums. Do you suppose you could show some respect?”

  “Well, it was pretty good, I guess.”

  “Pretty good? Drover, it’s never been done before. This was a first.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t really make a rhyme with chrysanthemum.”

  “‘Gum.’ ‘Gum’ rhymes with ‘mum.’”

  He grinned. “Yeah, but that’s kind of like cheating. I thought you were going to make a rhyme with the whole word.”

  “Drover, there is no word that will rhyme with ‘chrysanthemum,’ and in case you missed it, that was the whole point of the song.”

  “Well . . . I liked Pete’s poem better.”

  “You . . . what?” I stormed away from the little goof. “Just skip it, Drover. I’m sorry I bothered. Your mind is sick and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Don’t speak to me.”

  “Are you looking for Slim?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going in the wrong direction.”

  I whirled around and reversed directions. “Don’t tell me what to do, and stop following me. Someone might think we’re friends.”

  You see what I have to put up with? The little dunce liked Pete’s pitiful little verse about underwear better than my tribute to . . . oh well.

  I found Slim behind the machine shed, scowling at the motor of the old truck. It had been parked there since our last hay-hauling experience, a month ago. The hood was up, and Slim had reached his hand down toward the motor.

  I knew what was coming next, and came to a sudden stop. Drover ran into me. “Oops, sorry. Oh look, there’s Slim.”

  “Right. Listen, Drover, I’ve got a little job for you.”

  His face lit up. “Oh, goodie. You mean we’re friends again?”

  “Why yes, of course. That little spat we had about poetry . . . well, in the larger scheme of things, it meant nothing, almost nothing at all.”

  “Oh, good. There for a minute, I thought you were mad at me.”

  I gave a careless laugh. “Friends argue, Drover, but friendship remains the same.”

  “Yeah, like pork rinds.”

  “Pork rinds?”

  “Yeah, they’re always the same. Greasy. They give me indigestion.”

  “Yes, of course.” I leaned toward him and whispered, “Drover, Slim’s having a bad day. I think one of us should rush over to him and . . . you know, cheer him up with Howdys and Happy Looks. Which of us could do that?”

  He puzzled over that for a moment, then his face broke into a wide grin. “You know what? I think I could do it.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Yeah, ’cause I’m in a happy mood, and I know how to do Howdys.”

  “With your stub tail?”

  “Oh, yeah, I can wiggle it fast. See?” He gave me a demonstration of wiggling his tail. It was pathetic, but I pretended to be impressed.

  “That’s perfect, Drover, just what he needs. Okay, pal, rush over there and do your stuff. I’ll be right here, cheering you on.”

  “Okay, here I go!”

  Heh heh. Do you see what’s coming? You’ll love it.

  Chapter Four: Naptime on the Prairie

  The timing on this deal couldn’t have been better. Drover rushed over to Slim and started wig-wagging his tail. Slim pulled out the dipstick, squinted at it, and began looking around for a grease rag on which to wipe it.

  Now do you see what’s coming? Tee hee. I didn’t wish to be cruel to the runt, but let’s face it. Most of the time it was MY ear that got used as a grease rag, and I didn’t figure it would hurt Drover to be pressed into service. He would get a dirty ear, but so what?

  One of Drover’s problems is that he stays clean all the time. Show me a dog who never gets dirty and I’ll show you . . . something. A dog who has missed out on many of Life’s Richest Moments.

  It was for his own good, see, and it also served him right for making a mockery of my Poetry Lesson.

  The stage was set. Slim glanced around for something on which to wipe his dipstick, and there was little Drover at his feet—earnest, sincere, happy, cheerful, and dumb.

  “Hank!” Slim called.

  Huh?

  “Come here!”

  Me? There must have been some mistake. I mean, we had already made arrangements for Drover to do the job, right?

  “Come here, pooch. I need a big floppy ear for this, and yours is about the size of a tortilla.”

  A tortilla! Why, I had never been so insulted! And what did the size of my ear have to do with it anyway? I mean, any moron could clean a dipstick on . . .

  “Hurry up, you’re burning daylight.”

  I couldn’t believe it. He was serious about this; he wasn’t kidding. This was an outrage!

  Okay, have we discussed the problem with Drover’s ears? Maybe not, but we should. See, he had a rinky-dink set of ears, not a big manly set like mine, and when our cowboys needed to borrow an ear for an important job, naturally they, uh, came to me. Drover’s ears flunked the test.

  So when the call came for me to step forward and offer my ear in selfless service to the ranch, I was filled with pride. Slim had picked the right dog and made a wise decision. Holding my head at a proud angle, I marched forward, elbowed Mister Squeakbox out of the way, and offered my ear for the greater glory of the ranch.

  Slim took my ear and folded it in half. “Heck, if a guy had some guacamole and cheese, he could build a pretty nice burrito.”

  I tried to ignore him. Slim wants to be a comedian when he grows up, but some of us have doubts that he’ll ever grow up. And it’s no secret that his jokes are stale and corny.

 
A little humor there, did you catch it? Corny. Tortillas are made of corn, see? Ha ha. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so great, but it was better than Slim’s stale humor.

  I didn’t mind lending my ear to The Cause, but I didn’t appreciate him saying that my ear was as big as a TORTILLA. It wasn’t. My ears have a very pleasant shape, and you don’t have to take my word on that. Ask any lady dog in Texas. They know great ears when they see them, and they’ve always gone nuts about mine.

  Anyway, I did my loyal service to the ranch, ignored Slim’s childish jokes, and stood there whilst he pulled the dipstick through the fold of my ear. That done, he scrubbed his fingernails on the other ear and patted me on the chest so hard that it made me cough.

  HARK!

  “Thanks, pooch. You’re a true hero, I don’t care what everybody says.”

  At that point, I turned to Drover, who was still hopping around like a cricket and wearing a loony grin. Oh, and he was squeaking, “Happy, cheerful, happy, cheerful!”

  “You can shut it off, Drover. The show’s over.”

  “How’d I do? Did I cheer him up? Boy, that was fun.”

  My lips formed a snarl, and I found myself wondering . . . how does he always manage to weasel out of the dirty jobs? If it happened once or twice, you might not think anything about it, but this happens over and over.

  Oh well.

  The important thing is that Slim had managed to check the oil in the truck, and he was ready to move on to the next step. He climbed into the cab, pumped the gas pedal, pulled out the choke, and hit the starter. The motor cranked and groaned, and finally started, sending a plume of blue-and-white smoke through the cab.

  See, it didn’t have a muffler or tailpipe, so all the exhaust smoke came straight out of the mani-flubber . . . whatever you call that thing . . . and it fumed up the cab so badly, Slim vanished inside a blue cloud. Now and then I caught sight of his hands flapping the smoke around, and I could hear him coughing.

  He left the motor running and went into the machine shed for his hay chaps, hay hooks, water jug, and sack lunch. When he returned, he pitched me and Mister Happy up into the seat and pointed a bony finger at the paper sack.