Wild Times at the Bed and Biscuit Read online

  “Nice out here, isn’t it?” Ernest said in his heartiest voice.

  “Ahnnnk,” moaned the goose, mournful as ever.

  “Now, now,” said Ernest. “You’re outside! Smell the smells of fall!”

  “Ahhhnnnnnnk,” went the goose, his classic head drooping low.

  “Oh, for corn’s sake! Here we all are, worried sick, and you’re not even trying to get better! Don’t you want to go home?!”

  The goose raised his head. “Home. Yes. Take me home.” He looked at Gabby. “There. I said something.”

  “Rooty-ta-toot,” she replied sarcastically.

  “Mr. Zeus,” Ernest pleaded, “please tell us what you need!”

  “I need to go home.”

  Gabby sang, “Home . . . home on the ra-a-a-n-n-ge, where the deer and the antelope pla-a-a-a-y-y-y.”

  “Pond,” said the goose. “Geese live on ponds.”

  “Home . . . home on the ponnnnnnnd,” Gabby sang, very low.

  Zeus cried out, “Why can’t I just leave? I don’t belong here!”

  Ernest explained about antibiotics and taking time to heal from the arrow wound. “And you will go home! That’s a promise. But you must eat!”

  “Just let me go. I will find my home and my mate. Then I will eat, and she will eat.”

  And that’s that, Ernest thought, realizing that the goose would not change his mind.

  “I will wait,” said the goose. He ruffled his wings lightly, as if airing them, then composed himself on the grass.

  Ernest couldn’t think of anything else to say. He was a tame animal who lived in a house with a human. The goose was a wild thing who lived on a pond with his wild mate. He had told the goose the truth, the goose had replied with his own truth, and they were miles apart.

  THE NEXT DAY was the sixth day that the wild animals had been at the Bed and Biscuit. Everyone in Grampa’s family was tired because of extra work and worry. Most of them woke up late. And irritable.

  Grampa muttered as he washed his face. “Poor goose, I know just how he feels.” As he clumped downstairs he called, “Come on, Milly,” but Milly hid under the bed pillows.

  In the kitchen, Ernest listened to the bawling cows and wished that every day did not have to start with milking.

  Gabby perched on the end of the breakfast table. Staring morosely at her bowl of brown rice and chopped egg white, she grumbled, “Health food.”

  Wide awake and perky, Sir Walter gobbled his breakfast, slurped water, and said to Ernest, “We should check on the foxes, right?”

  “Wrong. Milking first. You know that. Then we’ll check on all the wild animals, not just the foxes. Stay here until Grampa and I get back. If you get bored, ask Gabby to tell you some stories.”

  Beak clacking, Gabby said, “Oh, sure! Good old Gabby! She’ll do whatever we tell her. Awwwkk! If that wouldn’t frost your beak!”

  Ernest and Grampa left for the barn, and while Gabby pecked fussily at her egg and rice, Sir Walter crept toward the pet door.

  Out in the barn, Ernest and Grampa got busy milking. To keep himself awake, Grampa began counting. He’d discovered that it took about 340 squirts to fill a pail. Large, mature Holsteins like Ruby — his biggest cow — often gave seven or eight gallons at each milking.

  When the cows had been milked and turned out to pasture, Grampa said, “’Long as we got such a late start, we’ll do our boarders while we’re out here.” He began in the dog runs by brushing Sherlock, the bluetick hound, while Ernest handled the milk delivery, carrying the pails of warm, foaming milk to the house. One by one, he carefully set them on the porch. Of course, his shower was right there, beckoning.

  Ernest positioned himself on the shiny white stones under the shower, tugged on the chain, and blissfully closed his eyes. As the water flowed over him, he thought, A pig asks for very little. Regular food and a place to sleep, with water for bathing and cooling off. That’s it.

  Unlike dogs, who need a great deal of training, and brushing, and attention . . . and . . . where the hay is Sir Walter? He knew they’d been gone a long time. The puppy would normally be outside by now, busily digging a hole or playing chase with Milly.

  Ernest got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Urgently he tugged on the chain to turn off the shower.

  In the kitchen, the puppy’s basket sat in front of the old black stove. The red plaid blanket was in place, but not the puppy.

  “Gabby! Where’s Sir Walter?” Ernest looked up at the curtain rod in time to see Gabby shake herself awake with a flutter of tail and wing feathers.

  “Gabby! Wake up! Where is Sir Walter?” cried Ernest.

  She peered blearily down at him. “He left just a bit ago. Went outside to do his . . . his business. Do you realize that your tail has come undone? It is sticking straight out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

  “That’s because I am upset! It’s almost lunchtime. You were in charge! SO WHERE IS THE PUPPY?”

  Gabby blinked. “Almost lunchtime? Are you sure?”

  “My stomach always knows! Where’s Milly? Maybe they went outside together.”

  Gabby flew down onto the kitchen table. “I must have fallen asleep. This is not good. I don’t need a dog myself, but Grampa loves him and he’s part of the family now. The trouble is, you never know what he’s going to do!”

  Ernest sank into a heap, disgruntled.

  “M-m-m-orning,” Milly purred as she entered the kitchen. She stopped, giving herself a long stretch, her rump in the air. “I feel so-o-o much better. Where’s Grampa?”

  “Outside,” Ernest replied, anxiously popping upright. “Was the puppy upstairs with you?”

  Blinking her emerald eyes, Milly said, “I don’t think so. It’s a very small space under Grampa’s pillows. Besides, he can’t jump up there.”

  Ernest stood up. “I don’t like this at all. I’ll go look for him, but I think he went to talk to those yippy, know-it-all foxes.”

  On the way to the foxes’ pen, Ernest considered again the job of a parent. Of course, I’m a pig, raising a dog. Maybe that makes it harder.

  Preoccupied, Ernest jogged past the muskrat’s pool.

  “You! Pig! What’s the matter with this pool? I can’t dig a tunnel!”

  Ernest stopped. “I’m rather busy . . .”

  The muskrat trundled over to the fence. “I said I can’t dig a tunnel!”

  “Really, Mr. Musky, I can listen later —”

  “Now will be fine! In our tunnels, we create safe nesting areas for newborns. We also have escape tunnels for avoiding mink and the big fish that eat our babies. These tunnels are critical!” he growled, right in Ernest’s face.

  Ernest refrained from pointing out that this pond had no baby muskrats, no mink, and no big fish. Instead he said, “Well, then, it’s a good thing you’ll be going home soon to your own pond at the shelter. Right now I have to retrieve our puppy. See you later!”

  He left the muskrat behind as he passed the empty pens and jogged toward the foxes’ pen by the woods. Even from a distance, however, he knew something was wrong. No warning yips announced his arrival. No tiny black dog stood with his nose pressed against the fencing of the pen.

  Ernest broke into an agitated jog, trotting all around the foxes’ pen. He saw a tunnel leading out of it on the side next to the woods.

  Stunned, Ernest trotted around the pen again, just in case he had missed something. When he came back to the tunnel, he snouted the ground and he knew. Two stinky little foxes and one clean Scottie dog had run away from the pen and into the woods.

  RACING TOWARD HOME, Ernest squealed his loudest, which was impressive. He squealed all the way back to the house, where he met Grampa on the porch.

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Grampa dropped the dish towel he was holding and bent down to rub Ernest’s head.

  Still in full oink, Ernest pelted back down the steps in a most un-piglike manner. He looked over his shoulder to be sure Grampa was co
ming.

  Together they ran to the small, empty pen nearest the woods and around the back of it to the freshly dug tunnel.

  “Ah, dangit!” Hands on his hips, Grampa glared down at the tunnel. “Sassy little buggers! Dug way down under my buried fence. Just shows who’s smart around here, doesn’t it?”

  Snout on the ground, Ernest began following the trail of the foxes and the puppy into the woods.

  “Come on, Ernest,” Grampa called, turning back toward the house. “They’re gone now. I’ll call the wildlife shelter and explain. We did what we could for those kits.”

  Ernest didn’t give a corn kernel for the foxes, but they had to find the puppy before something happened to him.

  “Ernest!”

  For the first time in his life, Ernest ignored Grampa’s call.

  “Ernest?” This time Grampa sounded puzzled.

  Gabby and Milly appeared, both aware that something was amiss. In a few short oinks, Ernest explained. Gabby flew immediately to her place on Ernest’s head. Milly ranged out from him a few feet, hunting in tandem with Ernest, her nose on the ground, seeking the scent.

  Grampa stood still and scratched his head. But not for long. “Laddie!” he cried out. “Laddie?”

  Grampa threw his cap on the ground and called louder. “Here, Laddie! Here, Sir Walter! Come to Grampa! Come on now, come to Grampa!”

  Ernest, Gabby, and Milly worked a bit farther into the woods. “They went this way,” Ernest told Milly. Behind them they heard Grampa calling for Sir Walter. His voice faded as he went toward the barn, back toward the house, and then over by the office.

  Curving her ears toward the office, Milly stood still and listened. “How long is it going to take him to figure out what happened?” she asked.

  Ernest, Gabby, and Milly had been following the crazy, zigzag trail of the foxes and the puppy for about an hour when they heard Grampa calling them.

  Ernest raised his head and squealed.

  Gabby flew off in a blur of green and purple feathers. “Do that again and I’ll bite your ear!” she squawked. She made such a racket scolding Ernest that Grampa came straight to them.

  “Okay, troops, I think I understand,” he panted. “Ernest, are you hunting the puppy? Is he in here somewhere?”

  “Wrunk,” Ernest said, wiping his snout on Grampa’s pant leg. He sensed Grampa’s fear and shared it. These woods — wild and unforgiving — were no place for a puppy who weighed only seven pounds and thought that the whole world loved him.

  “I’ve got water and a flashlight in my backpack,” Grampa said. “I’ll just follow your amazing snout and we’ll keep hunting till we find him.”

  Long hours followed — hours in which Grampa and his family fought wild brambles that lashed their bodies, thorny bushes that whipped their faces, and biting insects that drew their blood.

  Snapping at a big blackfly, Milly said, “It’s almost snowtime! These bugs should be gone by now! Why would anyone want to live here?”

  Ernest agreed. “This is a terrible path. Too much sun. Too many nasty bushes. Not enough shade trees.” Ernest sat and waited for Grampa to set out the bowl with water. He knew he was overheated, a serious problem for a pig.

  Everyone rested and drank water before they set off again. Grampa called, “Here, Laddie! Here, Sir Walter!” every few feet.

  Evening came. The woods cooled off and the mosquitoes doubled their attacks. Grampa ran out of water, forcing them to go home for the night.

  AnnaLee met them on the porch. “No puppy, huh?” She chewed on the end of her red braid. “After you phoned us, Mom and I called all over. Everybody knows to look out for him. We did the milking, too. We can keep milking till you find him.” She gave Grampa a long hug, and he rested his head on hers.

  “Thanks, honey. You folks are the best neighbors a guy could want. I’m just sick about this. When I think of all that puppy’s been through . . .”

  “You’re sure he’s in the woods?”

  “Pretty sure, yes. Ernest and Milly seem to be following a trail, so I’m following them. I don’t know what else to do.”

  That was a long, restless night at the Bed and Biscuit. Tense and eager for morning, Ernest listened to the clock hour after hour. When Rory the rooster announced the new day, Ernest was more than ready.

  He jumped to his hooves, went to his private bathroom by the toolshed, then charged back indoors. Sitting at the foot of the stairs, Ernest gave a modest oink. When no one moved upstairs, he oinked again, louder. And louder.

  Milly’s feet hit the floor and then he saw her peering down at him. “Ernest, do you know what time it is?”

  “Time to go,” he replied. “Wake up Grampa. I’ll get breakfast.”

  Ernest snouted open the refrigerator and the crisper drawer. He set out fruits, a head of cabbage, two tomatoes, a bowl of potato salad, and a loaf of bread on the food mat beside the water bowls.

  “Come on, Gabby! Let’s eat! The trail is growing fainter every minute.”

  “Ernest, do you know what time it is?”

  “Time for breakfast!” he snapped.

  A groggy Grampa filled a thermos with coffee and several bottles with water. Ernest in the lead, they pushed their way into the dense woods, heading directly toward the place where they’d stopped hunting the night before.

  By now, Ernest’s search for the puppy was driven by dread. Do we have bears? he wondered. Coyotes? No, we’d have heard their howls. Wolves? Big cats? All of them could finish off Sir Walter with one swipe of a paw.

  I have failed, Ernest decided. I am no good at raising dogs. Sir Walter was infatuated with those foxes. I should have seen this coming.

  “The fox scent is strong,” Milly said. “Do you think that if we find the foxes, we’ll find Sir Walter?”

  “I hope so. But I wish we’d had rain recently. Smells are so faint when it’s dry like this.”

  Grampa walked behind them, whacking his red cap against his leg and calling for the puppy. “Laddie? Here, Sir Walter! Come to Grampa!”

  Ernest smelled the acrid scent of the fox kits, but the trail continued to be difficult. It would dart off one way, stop, then turn around and come back before taking off again in another direction. If they were deliberately trying to confuse a tracker, they had done a good job.

  Milly sniffed the bark of a young fir. “They marked this tree.”

  By late morning, Ernest and Milly could detect only the fox scent — nothing that was Sir Walter’s smell. Somehow, somewhere, the puppy’s scent had vanished.

  AS NOON APPROACHED, they had gone over a mile into the vast woods between Grampa’s property and the McBrooms’ farm, where AnnaLee lived. Grampa went where his family led him. He drank coffee from his thermos now and then, but he said little.

  Later that afternoon, Ernest smelled the foxes’ scent angling back toward the fields of the Bed and Biscuit. This trail continued for a long way, to a small clearing shaded by Carolina pines.

  “I’ve got him!” Ernest told Milly. “Sir Walter was here!”

  Milly sniffed bushes and trees. “So were the foxes.”

  Ernest flopped down to think. “I have a theory,” he told Milly, who sat in front of him. “I think the foxes ran wild when they got loose. They didn’t care if Sir Walter could keep up or not. But they heard something that made them turn around and come back this way. Maybe it was the puppy, I’m not sure. But I get the best scent of him right here.”

  Grampa joined them in the clearing. He walked slowly and looked tired. “Do you all know we’ve been tracking for nine hours?” He sat down and leaned back against an oak tree.

  Ernest moved over to sit touching Grampa. Milly hopped into his lap, and Gabby started singing, “How much is that doggie in the window? Arf! Arf!”

  Grampa lifted Gabby from Ernest’s head and put her on his shoulder. “That’s a sore subject, you know. Our own doggie is lost! Plus a pair of foxes.”

  Ernest stood up abruptly. This was no time to re
st! Not when he had just found the scent! Snout to the ground, with Gabby back on his head and Milly by his side, he set out again.

  “Gabby,” he said, “do the arf! arf! part of that song, and maybe Sir Walter will hear us. Make it loud.”

  “ARF! ARF!” went Gabby, who loved to yell.

  Grampa, still resting in the clearing, called out as he had before. “Here, Laddie! Here, Sir Walter! Come! Come to Grampa!”

  In between Gabby’s energetic “ARF! ARF!” and Grampa’s plaintive calling came a faint, faraway sound.

  Ernest and Milly stopped, tilting their ears toward the sound.

  “I think so,” Milly said first.

  Ernest aimed himself at the sound, moving at a trot. Milly had to run to keep up and Gabby took to the air so that she didn’t fall off the pig. After a bit, they stopped again to listen.

  “Awooooo!” came a small, pitiful howl.

  Although he lagged behind them, Grampa heard and laughed out loud. “That’s my boy! Here, Laddie. Here, Sir Walter!”

  Everyone stood still, listening. Again came the same distinctive wail — a sound that only a Scotch terrier can make. It had not come closer.

  Now each of them called for Sir Walter. And Sir Walter called back.

  Milly’s ears twitched irritably. “Everyone keeps saying what a smart dog this is. So why doesn’t he come here?”

  “I have a theory,” Ernest began.

  “Here we go again!” said Gabby.

  Ignoring her, Ernest resumed trotting toward the woeful cry. He can’t come for some reason, so we must go to him.

  Ernest had jogged only a few minutes when he heard something coming toward him through the underbrush. The something alternately whimpered and yipped.

  “Wrunk?”

  Groveling on his stomach, Sir Walter appeared, his black hair filthy and matted with prickers, twigs, and leaves. Ernest smelled blood and saw bright red splotches forming a trail behind the puppy.

  Ernest couldn’t scold him. “What happened?” he asked as he snouted Sir Walter from head to tail. “Why are you bleeding?”