Who’s afraid of the big bad woof?
- Oscar the Pooch
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
“But if a mask is what it takes to get back to normal, I can deal with that. I think we’re finally on our way!”
The wind was cool in the early-morning shade. It drowned out the Witch’s voice so she had to shout for Mom to hear her stories. It blew through Mom’s sweat, freezing her front paws into useless stumps. Mom grabbed and flailed at the branches reaching across the trail to pull herself up with paws that couldn’t feel the sticks they were grasping for. I bounded up the slope, Mom scritching and slipping behind me. Even with the slippery mud, loose rocks, and overgrown bushes, it was easy to tell where to put your next step by where the bushes were thinnest. That is, until the trail was swallowed by the most aggressive flower bush I’d ever seen.
It was taller than the other bushes, towering high over Mom’s head. There was no walking around it; it was stuffed tight into all the good walking spaces and reached around and over us like a long-armed defender trying to block a basket. It flexed its beefy leaves. The flowers stuck out their tongues as if they were hissing.
I stopped and waited for Mom to catch up and give me instructions. The Witch’s droning voice told me where Mom was without my even looking, so I turned back to the bush and casually sniffed for clues. A rustling from deep inside the shrub ripped my attention away. What sounded like a giant creature was crashing through the brush.
When Mom saw my ears stiffen, she rushed to my side and grabbed ahold of my collar. The Witch didn’t notice a thing and droned on with her story at the same volume, which suddenly sounded much louder than before. It’s supposed to be Mom’s job to shush the Witch if we hear someone coming, but that tattletale wouldn’t recognize Mom’s freeze-dried fingers as a living thing. As the Witch nattered on, the rustling among the flowers turned and came toward us. Mom dropped my collar and poked more insistently.
With Mom distracted, I alone was left to deal with the monster closing in on us through the Great Wall of Flowers.
“COME OUT WITH YOUR PAWS UP!!!” I screamed in the voice-cracking bow-wow-wow I save for real danger, like if the mailman actually opens the gate.
Mom clapped her stumps together. “Oscar! C’mere!” she snarled in her dragon voice.
I paused just long enough for Mom to catch up, but I kept my hackles unholstered and never took my eyes off the rustling branches.
“I think it might be a bear,” I whispered, before bow-wow-wowing again loud enough to shake the mountain.
The flowers trembled. Now that Mom was here, I looked around for the best escape route. If I got away first, the bear would be more likely to gobble her up instead. It would be sad if Mom got eaten, but it wouldn’t be so bad to live a collarless life in the woods with the Raccoon family.
“Don’t you dare take off!” Mom hissed, hooking her frozen claws around my collar and trapping me for monster meat.
The bush split open and a couple of scrawny humans stepped out. I looked for signs of what breed they were to assess the threat, but their Captain Kangaroo hats and little round sunglasses might have been anything from software engineers to PhD students. Luckily, neither breed is aggressive unless poorly socialized to dogs.
“Cheeses, he never barks at people like that. I thought you were a bear,” Mom said without releasing her ice-claw from behind my hackles, which were still twice their normal size.
“I’m glad he did,” said the she-bear. “We lost the trail and almost went in the other direction until we heard him.”
“You shouldn’t go around scaring people like that,” I barked. “I wasn’t scared, but Mom had to use her dragon voice and I bet she probably sprayed her anal gland.”
When the danger had passed, Mom finally let go of my collar and scowled. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
“I thought they were dangerous,” I said. “Gol-ly, if you hadn’t been around to use as a shield, I don’t know what I would have done.”
Mom’s scowl softened. “It’s okay to be scared. We all confuse the danger in our imaginations with real life sometimes. But you really can’t get so worked up that you might hurt someone. What would’ve happened if you’d bitten one of those nice people?”
“I’d tell them it was an accident and then it would be okay. Once I explain that whoopsie-daisies, I thought you were the big, bad wolf, everyone would laugh, wipe up the blood, and keep hiking.”
“That’s not how it works, Oscar. Accidents happen, but there are consequences when you can’t control your behavior and someone gets hurt. Especially for loudmouths with sharp teeth like you.”
“Can’t you just tell people I didn’t mean it? If I wag a little to show I’m sorry, I bet they’d forgive me.”
