Little hound on the prairie
- Oscar the Pooch
- 5 days ago
- 8 min read
On the road, there was no knowing when the butt-shredding rocks would hit our tabottoms, so Mom could raise her arms in abandon as the world carried us from one surprise to the next. At home, we would only have the Witch’s lies to tell us what was happening in the world outside. “Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s break bad-lands before we go home.”
The Wagon rolled out of the black-white hills onto the prairie. I kept waiting for the land to do something interesting, but the only thing that happened was that the white dirt turned to grass. There were still cows, though. There are always cows.
Without warning, the Wagon pulled over as quickly and messily as a whale-mobile. I peeked around the arm shelf to find out what was happening in the cockpit. Mom jumped out and ran into the prairie like something had bitten her backside.
I climbed into the driving chair for a better view. “Don’t worry, I’ll just sit here in case the Law comes along,” I said to no one in particular.
While I waited for the Law to ask if I was okay and why the Wagon looked like that, Mom tip-toed through the grass as sneakily as the Hamburgler.
“Holy dog doo, Mom. Look out!” I barked when I saw what else was out there.
A pawful of the biggest, ugliest cows I’d ever seen stood in the grass staring at her. They looked like their father was a yak and their mother was a warthog. They looked like someone had taken a cow and squeezed all of its extra parts up around its shoulders. Their haircuts were just terrible, like Julia Child or Norm MacDonald, but worse. And they wore this frumpy cape—no, not a cape, a stole—around their shoulders.
“WHAT THE SMELL IS THAT MONSTROSITY?” I barked at top volume.
Almighty Dog put some beasts on this earth just for chasing. If a critter wouldn’t run right away, you had to bow-wow a war whoop and charge them like a cannonball. You weren’t supposed to stay real quiet and creep around like you didn’t want to raise suspicion. Mom was clueless when it came to wildlife. She always tried not to make any sudden moves.
When a beast ran away in spite of her incompetence, she just looked disappointed and went back to what she was doing before.
Even though I shouted at top volume through the window, Mom was deaf to my coaching. She just kept waving the Witch in front of her like garlic at a vampire and following the mutants in a slow-speed chase.
“They can smell you, you know!” I barked as loud as I could. “Lemme at ’em! I’ll bark at ’em, and I’ll chase ’em, and then I’ll bark at ’em while I chase ’em! Now! Run now! You’re letting them get away!”
Instead, Mom stood up out of her sneaking posture and put the Witch back in her pocket as the deformed cows lumbered into the background.
“GO BACK TO WHATEVER MOO-TANT RANCH YOU CAME FROM, YOU FREAKS!” I screamed.
Mom came back to the Wagon looking as un-disappointed as if she’d actually caught one of the moo-tants. I started quizzing her as soon as she opened the door. “Do you know what the heck those things were?”
“They’re buffalo!” she bragged. “Or… bison? Is there a difference?”
The freaks watched boredly from the top of the bluff where they’d stopped as soon as they saw that Mom was done chasing. “I thought bison were ex-stinked,” I said suspiciously, without taking my eyes off of them.
“I didn’t pay attention in that part of history class. C’mon. Get down so you can pose for a picture.”
“No way, José. You’re gonna run away and leave that curly hunk of jerky to eat me first.” I aimed an earth-rumbling growl their way so they would know I wasn’t afraid. The king wartcow chewed his gum and looked unimpressed. “DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE!” I stepped aggressively back onto the copilot’s chair to show them that I wouldn’t hesitate to sick Mom on them if they tried anything. Mom stepped out of the doorway to give me room to jump out and charge, but I just took another bold step backward, deeper into the Wagon. Why put in all that work to train a human if you’re not going to use her for protection?
“We should keep away so their ex-stink doesn’t get on us,” I coached.
“Fine.” Mom remounted the driving chair. “You’re such a party pooper.”
The Wagon remounted the road, but not for long. Every time the road swayed around another bend, the Wagon pulled over again and Mom ejected herself to take more pictures. It turned out that the reason they were called bad lands is because they weren’t terribly good at being hills, canyons, or fields. I’m not sure you could even call them lands, since they were more hole than land. They had no sense of style, mixing back-and-forth stripes like lines in a book with up-and-down creases like tree bark. Maybe they would have been cooler up close, but Mom never let me go more than a few steps from the Wagon.
The umptieth time we dismounted, there was something different in the air. My eyes followed my nose and landed on a pack of sheep staring curiously back at me.
“Mom! Mom! Let me chase ’em!” I barked with so much friendliness that it cracked my voice.
“Hell no! Anyway, you’re not allowed more than 25 feet from the parking lot.”
“Why not?” I whined. “I was born for this!”
“This is a National Park. No dogs on the trails,” she reminded me. “I read something about fleas being a problem…”
“Stop believing the Witch’s nonsense! I’m poison to fleas.” I puffed out my pest-free chest. “I just had my pill yesterday, remember? And anyway, sheep can’t catch fleas because they have wool instead of fur. I’ll make them tell you themselves if you’ll just let go of the leash…”
“Some dogs carry fleas,” she corrected, “…and the fleas could infect the prairie dogs.”
“There are dogs out here?” I squealed. I couldn’t wait to meet one and ask him to show me all the sheep hangouts.
“That’s just a nickname. I think they’re actually more like ground squirrels.”
“There are squirrels out here?” I screeched. I’d had this place all wrong!
“No, shut up. This is important. Fleas may be annoying to you, but they carry diseases that can make prairie dogs get sick and die.”
“Like the boogeyvirus?”
“Yeah. You could kill someone if you pass on your fleas.”
“But I don’t have fleas because I take my medicine. The squirrel-dogs can’t catch bugs I don’t have. Lemme at those sheep. I’ll scatter ’em like a bunch of wooly bowling pins!”
Mom wrapped more of the leash around her hand to keep me closer. “That’s the thing, we don’t know for sure that you don’t have fleas. Even if you’re clean, we can’t prove it. So you can’t go.”
“Innocent until proven guilty, Mom.”
“Infected until proven innocent,” she countered. “Fleas don’t really follow the law, and neither do viruses.”
“No fair. If the squirrel-dogs are so delicate, they should stay in their own holes and not ruin the fun for everyone else.”
“To be fair, you’re the one coming from out of town to stick your big nose in their holes. They deserve to be safe from diseases carried by outsiders.”
“But you always say it’s good to make Friends from other places so we can learn about different ways of living.”
“We should respect when we’re not invited, and when it’s time to go back where we came from.” Mom turned so that only the arm holding the leash was left behind.
