Maggie Rose stroked my back. “No, Lily,” she said. “We have to stay here.”
I do not like that word, “no.”
I perked up; the field was littered with mounds of dirt with holes in them, and for just a moment a small head poked up and then vanished back down. This was the new animal I could smell so strongly!
Two of the men outside stuck a long hose into a hole in the ground. The other end of the hose went into a truck that was parked right next to ours. The back of the truck had a big window set into one side so that I could see right into it. I yawned, not understanding anything.
“Ready!” someone shouted. Then there was a very loud, rumbling whoosh. I jumped, startled, and tried to shake the sound out of my ears. I wished it would stop, but it just went on and on!
Dad turned and looked back at us, probably wondering why we didn’t jump out and run around. He shook his head and raised his hands.
“Oh no—he says it isn’t working, Lily!” Maggie Rose moaned.
I looked at my girl. Whatever we were doing was not making her happy. I tried to think of what I could do, but all I could think of was chicken treats.
“Got one!” shouted a voice. “There it goes!”
Maggie Rose squirmed nearer to the window. “Lily, look!”
I had no idea what she was talking about, though I wagged a little to hear my name. Suddenly, to my surprise, I caught a glimpse of something moving inside the truck near ours. Through the big window, I could see a small furry body drop through the air and plop onto the floor. It immediately jumped up and glanced around. It looked like a big squirrel! As far as I could tell without smelling it, it seemed very surprised.
“They vacuumed one up!” Maggie Rose told me excitedly.
4
The squirrel in the back of the truck was sniffing at the floor, maybe looking for peanuts. This was a new type of squirrel to me, and I wagged, thinking how much fun we were going to have when Maggie Rose let me join it in the big truck with the window! A moment later it was joined by another, and then another. They all touched noses, like dogs in a dog park, but they did not sniff each other’s butts.
“It’s like a bounce house!” Maggie Rose told me. She clapped her hands together. She was grinning. “A prairie dog bounce house. Do you think they like bounce houses as much as I do, Lily?”
Yes, I thought to myself. If we weren’t going to have chicken treats, I was ready to play with the new squirrels.
Pretty soon, the loud noise stopped. I was relieved. Dad returned to the truck, smiling.
“Got them all, I think,” he told Maggie Rose. “No injuries. Looks like this is really going to work!”
Now everyone was happy! This is one of the main jobs of being a dog, and I was glad I had managed to cheer everyone up. I thought it would be an excellent time to break out Craig’s socks. A man and a woman, both wearing thick gloves, climbed into the truck where the small plump squirrels had landed. I wished I could go in there, too. I would love to play Chase-Me in a truck full of squirrels!
But it seemed that no one was thinking about how much a good dog would like to play Chase-Me, because in a little while our truck was moving again, and so was the truck with the big windows. They were taking the new squirrels for a car ride!
I squirmed around in Maggie Rose’s arms to watch out the back window. She unsnapped my leash so I could move more easily.
I was not sure what we were doing. If these squirrels were going for a car ride, why couldn’t they be here in the back seat with my girl and me? We could all sniff out the windows.
“Next stop: a new home for prairie dogs!” Dad said to Maggie Rose.
I wagged. Dad sounded so happy that a dog park seemed like a real possibility!
Finally, the truck came to a stop. We were in a grassy field. A couple of other cars bumped down the road after us and stopped nearby.
I looked eagerly at Maggie Rose, wagging as hard as I could. We were going to get out now, right? And run with the squirrels?
“Is this where the prairie dogs are going to live, Dad?” Maggie Rose asked.
Dad nodded. “I came out here with some other wardens a couple of days ago, and we dug a new burrow for them,” he said. “They need someplace to hide, or hawks or ferrets could get them.”
“Ferrets like Freddie? At the shelter?” Maggie Rose asked. “I’ve never seen Freddie try to hunt any of the other animals. He’s friends with Lily!”
Dad put his hand on my head, smoothing my fur, and I wagged. “Sure, but a tame ferret in a cage isn’t the same as a wild one, honey,” Dad said. “Freddie gets fed every day, so he doesn’t have to hunt. There are wild ones out here, though, and prairie dog is on their menu. But with a tunnel to dive into, these little guys should be safe. Let’s see how they like their new home!”
Then Dad climbed out, but to my surprise, Maggie Rose didn’t. She didn’t let me out, either. I barked at the windows to remind her that I had been a good dog in the car for a very long time, and I needed to run around. Peeing would be nice, too. But she didn’t open the door. She did, however, lower my window all the way, so I could drink in all the wonderful odors.
Dad walked around to the back of the squirrel truck. He and a woman held sticks with big nets on the end. When he opened the back of the truck, the new squirrels scampered and squeaked inside their room. They seemed unhappy.
Clearly, they needed a good dog to cheer them up. I looked impatiently at Maggie Rose. When was she going to let me out of the car?
I didn’t understand what was going on! Dad and the woman began gently thrusting their sticks into the back of the truck, pulling out netfuls of squirrels. The two humans set all the squirrels on the ground and the little creatures immediately took off running, as if playing Chase-Me. They ran a very short distance to some mounds of dirt. They sniffed the dirt, but mostly they sniffed each other. They seemed confused, which I understood—how do you play Chase-Me without a dog?
Dad came back to us. “They’ve found the prairie dog town, but they don’t want to go in the tunnels for some reason. We’re going to have to chase them into the holes, get them used to the idea!”
I wagged.
Dad stood and watched as the rest of the people moved slowly, walking around the confused pack of new squirrels. He groaned when a good number of the little animals started doing the game correctly, dashing a short distance out into the open fields. “Stop!” he called. “This is just making this worse!”
I simply couldn’t understand it. The squirrels had bunched up, sniffing each other, trying to figure out when I would come out and play. The people had stopped moving and were standing around with their hands on their hips.
“Laurie,” Dad called, “go way around, out into the field, cut off their escape that way. This is a disaster—we need to get them into the holes! But they have never seen people, and don’t understand what we are.”
I saw a woman run away and then, after a few moments, curve around until she wound up standing far out in the grass, between us and the squirrels. They saw her, too: they stood up on their rear legs, trying to see what she was up to.
I couldn’t wait any longer. I squirmed and twisted and slipped out of Maggie Rose’s hands. Then I leaped for the open window.
Time to play!
“Lily, come back!” Maggie Rose shrieked.
5
As soon as I hit the ground, I started running straight toward the cluster of squirrels, so happy to finally be playing! They reacted by milling around for a moment and then dashing in all directions.
“No, Lily!” Maggie Rose wailed.
I was almost on top of a squirrel, and then it vanished! It had darted down into a hole. I turned to pursue another, and it dove into the ground as well. What? These squirrels weren’t climbing trees, but they were playing unfairly anyway. Within moments, they were all gone!
I always think squirrels are going to do Chase-Me correctly, but I get fooled every time.
D
ad came over and reached down and I wagged. He picked me up in his big, thick gloves and carried me over to the truck. “Well, I should be angry with you that you let Lily escape,” he told Maggie Rose as she opened the door, “but it turns out she was just what we needed. The prairie dogs didn’t understand when they saw people coming to try to herd them, but they recognized a predator when they saw one, and followed their instincts right into their new homes!”
“Oh, Lily would never hurt any of them.”
“Right,” Dad agreed. “But they don’t know that.”
Dad took me to the back of the truck, raised the door, and pulled out a hose.
“What are you doing?” my girl asked him.
“I don’t think Lily has any fleas on her, but we can’t take that chance. I have flea shampoo, and I am going to bathe her right now with this water tank I always carry.”
I was wagging until Dad started giving me a bath, and then I was not wagging. A bath? After I had been such a good dog?
Sometimes I just do not understand people.
Dad used miserably stinky liquid on me, and I sneezed, and then he poured water on me and toweled me down. I liked the towel but nothing else. Finally, he took me to Maggie Rose and laid me in her lap.
“I’m watching the prairie dogs, Dad! They keep coming up to look around, and a couple are digging in the grass,” Maggie Rose said as Dad started the truck.
“It worked like a charm. Great to have a new way of moving those little guys without hurting them!” Dad said happily.
I settled onto Maggie Rose’s lap for a nap, but I woke up when the truck stopped. I figured we were Home again, or maybe at Work, where I have so many friends—Brewster the dog, Freddie the ferret, and all the other cats and dogs who visit for a while and then leave with their new people.
But where we were—it did not smell like Home or Work. The scent of this place wafted in through the open windows, and it smelled full of plants and living things. It smelled wild.
“Come and see the campsite, Lily!” Maggie Rose said, and she held the door open for me.
We were on a small, flat patch of ground surrounded by trees—towering trees, more and bigger than I had ever seen in one place before. Through a couple of the trees I could see and smell a big patch of water. Next to us was the truck, and a sooty circle surrounded by rocks, and a flat table with benches alongside it, and a strange sort of house made of cloth that Dad was tugging on.
What was this place?
Nose to the dirt, I dashed around eagerly, pulling Maggie Rose behind me on my leash. Other people had walked over this area, but not very many. More animals than people had been here. Some of the scents I recognized, like squirrels (tree squirrels, not hole-in-the-ground squirrels) and deer.
Were we going to stay here? Was this our new Home? What about Mom and Bryan and Craig? What about Work, with all my animal friends? Wouldn’t they miss me? I would certainly miss them!
“Oh, Lily, you look worried,” Maggie Rose said. She got down on her knees to scratch my back and rub my ears. “Don’t worry, you’ll like camping. It’s going to be fun. Fun, Lily!”
So then I knew that, whatever was happening, it was going to be good. Maggie Rose was happy. That proved it.
“I feel kind of bad that the boys don’t get to see this,” Maggie Rose said, looking up at Dad. “They would really love this place.”
Dad had some big pieces of wood in his arms. He dropped them next to the sooty circle on the ground.
“You’ve got a big heart, Maggie Rose,” he said. “And we’ll come back with the boys another day. But this time is for you and me.”
I gnawed on a stick while Maggie Rose and Dad pulled things from the car and put them inside the cloth house. Then Dad played with his wood that he had put in the sooty circle on the ground. Before too long, the sharp smell of smoke pushed up into the air, with bright flames licking out from the sticks.
Sometimes at Home I had seen a fire in the fireplace, but this was new! It seemed more exciting to have a fire out in the open, not stuck behind a screen in the wall. We were having a wonderful time, even if I wasn’t sure what we were doing. I sat and scratched behind my ear with a rear paw.
I really liked the open fire when Maggie Rose and Dad put hot dogs on sticks and stuck them into the flames. That smelled so marvelous that I drooled in the dirt! I sat and watched intently as Maggie Rose put her hot dog in bread, sprayed it with something that had a sweet odor, and began eating.
I concentrated on staring at Maggie Rose, letting her know with my gaze that I would very much appreciate a piece of hot dog. I was being a good dog. Would she give me one?
6
“Here, Lily,” Maggie Rose said to me. She extended a big chunk of hot dog toward me, and I delicately lifted it from her fingers. This was how I knew my girl loved me, and that I was indeed a good dog who deserved a piece of hot dog, and hopefully another one.
After the sky turned dark, Dad and Maggie Rose and I climbed inside the cloth house.
It was a strange place! There were no beds. Maggie Rose lay down on the floor and snuggled into a silky kind of blanket that was a little like the bags Mom and Dad carried food in. Dad lay down beside her in his own bag. There was no bag for a dog.
I was so puzzled I flung myself on my girl, panting into her face.
“Ugh, Lily, calm down!” Maggie Rose said. She put an arm around me and tugged me down between her and Dad. “You sleep here, okay, Lily? Sleep right here.”
Maggie Rose lay still, and after a while I could tell from her breathing that she was sleeping. Dad, too.
But I was wide awake. All the smells of the outdoors came drifting into the cloth house, and I could hear birds calling, small animals scurrying, and something bigger clomping through the bushes.
I squirmed up to lick Maggie Rose’s face, wanting her awake so that she could experience all this with me.
“Mmmmmph. Lily. No,” Maggie Rose said sleepily.
That word again. “No.” I licked Maggie Rose’s ear. Why wouldn’t she wake up? Surely we weren’t going to just lie here, with all the animal scents and sounds on the other side of the cloth walls.
“Lily. Sleep. Now,” Maggie Rose mumbled.
So I had to lie there, the only one awake.
What was going on?
* * *
In the morning I decided my confusion didn’t matter, because everything was so much fun!
First, Dad cooked breakfast over the fire. Maggie Rose put my regular food in my bowl for me, but she also let me have some of her scrambled eggs with bacon. The bacon was a little burned, but I did not care at all. I will eat bacon under all circumstances.
Then she took me for a walk in the woods, but she did not put on my leash. And I had never smelled so many interesting smells in one place. Rocks! Moss! Leaves! Sticks! Animal poop!
And even more exciting were the animals who had left the poop. Animal scents were everywhere! They had walked over the ground, and they had left scratches in the dirt and pee under the bushes.
I could hardly believe how marvelous it was! Yes, I missed Mom and Casey and Brewster and Craig and Bryan with his peanut butter pockets, but this place was the best, and as far as I was concerned they should all come to live with us here and sleep in the cloth room.
The only thing that could have made it better was if some of these animals had come out to play. But they seemed to be shy. Some animals are shy at first, but I’ve made friends with nearly all of them in the end. If they became really good friends, I thought, they could sleep in the cloth room with the rest of us.
Maggie Rose led me down a path toward the glimmering water I had glimpsed yesterday. I was surprised when we arrived there. I was used to seeing the water in my bowl, and I’d watched Maggie Rose fill up the tub at Home with water and get in it. That was called a “bath,” and I usually left the room as soon as I heard the word, because I did not want to get involved in such matters. My girl’s bathwater had bubbles i
n it that smelled strange and tasted worse. My baths, like the one I’d just had, had fewer bubbles and smelled absolutely awful.
There is no reason for anyone to ever take a bath that a dog can understand.
This water, though, was different. For one thing, it was huge! There was much more water than would ever fit into my bowl, or even into Maggie Rose’s tub.
It did not have bubbles in it, either. Instead, there were plants growing in it. I took a tentative drink, then returned to my girl’s side. Then, in the bushes behind her, I caught a new scent. I stopped and sniffed hard.
An animal! A new friend! I could hear it now. It made a rustling sound. It was coming closer! It had stopped being shy and was ready to play!
A slender, dark head with two glistening eyes poked out of the bush behind Maggie Rose. My new friend was small, about the same size as Freddie, my friend the ferret, and I could smell that she was female. I could also smell that she was not a dog. As she emerged from the shrubs, I saw that she was all black, except for two long white stripes down her back.
Another new type of squirrel? I already knew that dogs came in all sizes and shapes, but I’d never before considered that squirrels might try to be like dogs, and be different from each other as well.
A striped squirrel! How exciting! Maybe this one would play Chase-Me fairly. I bowed down with my front legs low, my rump high, and my tail waving, to let my new squirrel friend know I was ready.
The squirrel made a funny kind of grunting sound, turned, and waddled back into the bush.
Time to chase!
“Lily! Where are you going?” Maggie Rose shouted as I plowed through the bush. “Come back! That’s a skunk!”
7
Twigs and leaves slapped me, but I struggled through. On the other side, right by a mossy log, was my new friend. She peered at me and then turned so her butt was facing me.
Lily to the Rescue: The Not-So-Stinky Skunk Page 2
