The Case of the Dinosaur Birds. John R. Erickson

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СКАЧАТЬ I guarantee you won’t like it.”

      At that point, I whirled away from the sulking cat and prepared myself for the Scrap Event. You’ll be impressed by this. See, a lot of your ordinary dogs would have gone into a wild celebration—jumping around, thrashing their tails, barking, drooling, making a big scene.

      Not me. I made a special effort to control my savage instincts because . . . well, when you know that you’ve won the big game, you don’t need to gloat. Gloating can be a lot of fun, but it’s only icicles on the cake. Winning is enough.

      And so it was that I turned to the control panel in my mind and began flipping switches.

      Leaps and Dives: OFF.

      Wild, Exuberant Swings on the Tail Section: OFF.

      Dripping Tongue: OFF.

      Eyes Blazing with Food Lust: OFF.

      As the boy came down the sidewalk, I sat on the ground beside the yard gate, first in line, a perfect doggly gentleman waiting to receive his scrap award.

      He gave me a smile. “Hi, Hankie. You want some skwaps?”

      I was trembling with excitement but didn’t let it show. He opened the gate and held the plate under my . . . BACON! Holy smokes, I had won the lottery! Six or seven fatty, juicy, fragrant ends of bacon!

      Yes, I wanted scraps, but I would be a gentleman about it. I was first in line, so there was no need to behave like a slob. I held tight to my emotions and beamed him a look that said “Just any morsel will be fine.”

      He was impressed. He should have been. He gave me a pat on the head and looked at the food line, which consisted of me first, Drover second, and Kitty O’Glutton on the tail end. Tee hee.

      “Okay, y’all, make a line along the fence, and don’t eat till I give the signal.”

      Yes sir! I was already in the right place, so Drover and Kitty pushed and shoved to get the slots to my right. We ended up with a new line: me on the left, Drover in the middle, and Pete on the far right. We all turned our eyes toward the boy.

      He gave his head a nod. “That’s good. Now, since Hankie was first in line, I’m going to give him the bacon.” He scraped the bacon onto the ground in front of me.

      To my right, I heard odd noises. Drover let out a moan, and Pete made the sound cats make when they’re very unhappy—the yowl that reminds you of a police siren. He was hating this; and while I didn’t wish to be overbearing, I allowed myself to whisper, “Something wrong, Pete? Talk to me, pal. Hey, if you’ve got any gripes about the service, call the manager. Raise a fuss, file a complaint, don’t be bashful.”

      The look he gave me would have scalded the feathers off of thirteen chickens. He was mad, fellers, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Hee hee.

      Alfred moved on down the line. He scraped some egg scraps in front of Drover and moved on to Pete. “Welp, alls that’s left is a biscuit, Pete. You want a biscuit?” Pete let loose a pitiful whine. Alfred shrugged. “I don’t think Hankie will share his bacon.”

      Exactly right. Hankie would NOT share his bacon with the little moocher. If Kitty wanted bacon, he should have come early and waited in line like the rest of us.

      Well, the scraps had been distributed, and all that remained was for Alfred to give us the signal to start gobbling . . . uh, eating, let us say. My whole body quivered with antsippitation as he lifted his right hand into the air.

      “Ready?”

      I froze, waiting for his hand to come down. It didn’t. Instead, his gaze rose up to the sky, and he said, “Wowee, look at those birds!”

      A voice in my mind cried out, “Wowee, forget the birds; let’s eat!”

      But his gaze was locked on the sky. “They look like pterodoctyles—dinosaur birds!” He dashed back to the porch. “Mom, come look!”

      Rats. Breakfast had been put on hold. So, with nothing better to do, I lifted my gaze and studied the objects in the sky. At first I thought they were buzzards, large birds that move through the air with slow flaps of their wings.

      But a closer inspection revealed something else. They had long necks that stuck out in front and long skinny legs that stuck out behind, and . . . their beaks! My goodness, they had incredibly long beaks.

      These were not buzzards or hawks or owls or any other kind of bird that lived on my ranch. I had never seen a . . . what had Alfred called them? Terra-dog-tails? I had never seen a Terradogtail, but Alfred had several books on dinosaurs, and by George, if the boy said those were Terradogtail Dinosaur Birds, maybe they were.

      Sally May came out the door, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked up into the sky. “Well, my stars, I’ve never seen such a thing.”

      “They’re pterodoctyles, Mom, I’ve seen ’em in pictures!”

      She laughed. “Well, I think pterodactyls are extinct.” She noticed us waiting at the yard fence. “Sweetie, your little friends are waiting for their breakfast. You’d better let them eat. When Daddy gets home, we’ll ask him about the birds.”

      Right. Forget the birds.

      Alfred came back to the gate. He lifted his right arm. “Ready?” Yes, yes, we’d been ready for hours. “Okay!” His arm swooped downward, giving us the long-awaited signal to dive in and . . .

      Huh?

      MY BACON WAS GONE!

      I whirled around to the right and faced Drover, who was gobbling his scrambled eggs. “Drover, only seconds ago I had seven fatty ends of bacon right here in front of me. If you stole my bacon . . .”

      “It wasn’t me. I’ve got eggs.” In saying this, he splattered my face with several fragments of half-chewed egg.

      “Yes, and you just spewed egg bits into my face!”

      “Well, you made me talk with my mouth full.”

      “And you just did it again!”

      “Sorry.”

      “Greedy pig! Stop spitting egg on me!”

      “Well, leave me alone and let me eat.”

      “This will go into my report!”

      I wiped the egg off my face, whirled around to my left, and beamed a murderous glare at the cat. He was trying to chew his biscuit and seemed to be having some trouble. On another occasion, I would have paused to enjoy the spectacle of him wrestling with a hard biscuit, but not now.

      “Pete, someone has stolen my bacon, and I’m putting the entire ranch under Lockdown. Drop the biscuit and take three steps back. Move!”

      To my astonishment, the cat did as he was told. I mean, this might have been the first time in history that a cat had ever followed an order. Obviously, the little creep had seen the fury in my eyes СКАЧАТЬ