Stick Dog Dreams of Ice Cream. Tom Watson
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Название: Stick Dog Dreams of Ice Cream
Автор: Tom Watson
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780007581269
isbn:
Poo-Poo and Stripes followed as well – glad to end the conversation.
And Mutt came along too. He was eager to find something to help wash down the final threads of that old grey sock.
Halfway through the forest, Poo-Poo skidded to a halt. He snapped his head left and right, up and down. He sniffed continuously as he jerked his head all around. The other dogs had all slowed and stopped to watch this display.
“What is it, Poo-Poo?” asked Mutt. “Do you smell something?”
“Oh, I smell something, all right,” Poo-Poo declared. He inched closer to a large oak tree. “I just can’t put my paw on it. But it smells familiar.”
“Is it hamburgers?” asked Karen with real hope in her voice.
“Or frankfurters?” asked Stripes.
“Maybe pizza?” Mutt asked.
Poo-Poo answered all three questions by shaking his head. “Up in the tree,” he whispered as he stepped quietly toward the big oak’s trunk. “Squirrel.”
This is what Stick Dog was afraid of. He knew that Poo-Poo could stalk a squirrel for hours. And it was too hot – way too hot – to be delayed by this.
Poo-Poo circled the tree a few times, stopped, and peered up through the leaves and branches. He took a couple of short, quick sniffs. “There’s a fuzzy-tailed, acorn-munching chatter-mouth up there, all right,” Poo-Poo whispered. “If I could see him, I’d get him.”
“Can’t you see him, Poo-Poo?” Karen asked.
He shook his head but kept peering up into the top branches.
“Then how do you know there’s a squirrel up there?” asked Stripes.
“Are you kidding me?!” Poo-Poo exclaimed, taking real offence. “I can smell a barbecue potato chip three miles away. I can smell a smoking grill in the next county. I can distinguish whether a tortilla chip in a rubbish bin on the other side of Picasso Park is nacho cheese flavour or cool ranch flavour. You think I can’t sniff out a nasty, nutty-breathed tail-shaker?!”
“OK, OK,” said Stripes.
Mutt didn’t pay much attention at all. He was twisting his tongue around inside his mouth trying to get the sock strings dislodged from between his teeth.
Sorry. I just need to interrupt the story here for a minute – because this thing that’s happening to Mutt drives me crazy too.
You probably remember from the previous stories that I need to make little comments here and there sometimes. I can’t help myself. And, umm, you’re not going to hassle me about it, right?
Thanks.
Anyway, I can’t stand that feeling of having something stuck in my teeth.
Worst food for getting stuck in your teeth? Celery.
I love celery. It’s crunchy and tastes pretty good for, you know, a vegetable. Dip it in a little peanut butter, and you almost forget that you’re eating something healthy and green.
But it’s the worst for getting stuck between your teeth. It’s kind of stringy to begin with, and those strands have a special way of getting stubbornly stuck. And here’s the worst part: they’re a little bit slimy because the spit in your mouth combines with the moisture in the celery, and that makes the stringy parts impossible to grab. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve shoved my whole hand in my mouth trying to get a celery strand out. I get a good grip and then – SLIP – I can’t get it.
It’s super annoying.
So I can totally relate to what Mutt’s trying to do here with the strings from that old grey sock. While he did his best to get those strings out, Poo-Poo continued to circle the tree trunk as he stalked the squirrel. Karen and Stripes had found some shade several steps away, where they settled in to observe the whole affair.
“That sneaky, snivelling villain,” Poo-Poo muttered to himself when he stopped once to glare up into the tree for a moment. “If I could just get my paws on him, then I—”
“Poo-Poo?”
It was Stick Dog.
Poo-Poo jerked around for a moment, surprised out of his squirrel-stalking trance. He snapped his head toward Stick Dog and then yanked it back around to stare up into the tree again. “Yes, Stick Dog?”
“I don’t mean to interrupt you here,” Stick Dog began. “And if I’m ruining your concentration or something, just tell me and I’ll stop bothering you.”
“It’s no problem. I can do more than one thing at a time. I can circle the tree while we talk,” Poo-Poo said confidently. He proceeded to pace again. In just a couple of steps, he stubbed his front right paw on a tree root, stumbled, and rammed his shoulder into the tree trunk, knocking off a big chunk of brown-and-black bark. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“Well, I was just thinking about what you said a couple of minutes ago,” Stick Dog commented. “About how you can smell things from really far away? Like the flavour of a tortilla chip across the park or a grill from a long way away?”
“Mm-hmm, that’s right,” Poo-Poo said. He nodded his head at Stick Dog, and this seemed to throw him off balance again. He hit his head against the tree. Poo-Poo rubbed it, smiled, and before continuing to circle, whispered to himself, “Just like old times.”
Stick Dog allowed Poo-Poo to regain his footing before he asked, “But can you smell water?”
Poo-Poo stopped. The timing of the question came just when he was on the opposite side of the trunk from Stick Dog. He didn’t move his body but did stretch his neck out and around the tree to look directly at Stick Dog. “I can smell anything, anywhere, anytime,” he СКАЧАТЬ