In the Absence of Antelope

I was awakened by the sound of the dog door flap going like playing cards in bicycle spokes.  (You remember those?)

As I lifted my head, there was much yipping, sqeeging and snarling from the back yard, but none of the usual barking.  I could see a highly agitated Tuppence running back and forth through the dog door, obviously trying to enlist human help.  Fearing that maybe Tommy was out there injured, I got up, grabbed my glasses, and flipped on the patio lights.

Tuppence was wailing, “He won’t give me any, he won’t give me any, hewon’tgivemeany.”

I stepped out into the patio summer night and spotted Tommy at the edge of the light pool--kind of in shadow, but he was acting confused, and had something dangling from his mouth.  One of his circles took him a bit more into the light, and it looked like a messy, dirty gray, slobbery tube about 3 inches long.  Tuppence was still whining and pushing at me.

“Tommy, what have you got!?”

“Muffa-peeled-moufs.”

“What?”

“(p’toui) It’s a field mouse.”

I ask, “Tommy, where did you get a field mouse?”

Proudly he says, “I hunted it.”

“Hunted?”

“That’s what we do, we beagles.  We were bred and trained to be mighty hunters.  And I just hunted this trophy field mouse.”

“Hunted?  In our back yard?  Trophy?”

“You won’t let us hunt squirrels or rabbits.  We hunt mostly rodents, you know.”

“Well………”

“And, to what Order do mice belong?”

I sigh.  “The Order Rodentia.”

“Bingo,” says Tommy, reaching down for his prize.

“Wait.  What makes you think you two house hounds are hunters?”

Tuppence jumps in.  “We were born to it.  Just like some fools are born to be satirists.”

I asked, “Since when do hounds know words like, ‘satirist’?”

“We live with you, don’t we?  We can either call you a satirist, or a smartass.  You choose.

“We were born to hunt, and since you don’t keep any antelope in the back yard, we have to stay sharp by bagging mice.”

“You mean to tell me,“  I pondered, “You think beagles hunt antelopes?”

Tommy snarled, “Wolves do.  So we do.”

“But wolves are much larger, faster, and more fierce than you beagles,” I said.

In chorus they replied, “Says who?”

“Well, OK.  But, Tommy, why were you wandering around with that mouse?  I’ve seen you chomp down bigger bites than that in a gulp.  Like that time with the whole slice of pepperoni pizza.”

Tommy picked up his quarry and led us back into the bedroom.

“Tommy!  Don’t you dare jump on the bed with that.  What are you doing?”

Tommy put it down on the carpet and said, “Deciding how to fix it.”

“Fix it?”

“Mmmmhmmmm.  Florentine; Provencal; of maybe just a simple sautee.  You aren’t the only one who likes fancy food, you know.”

Because I have bending and reaching problems, I keep a “getting stick” handy.  During the above gourmet mouse prep discussion, I reached over and got it.  Like brooms, mops, and vacuum sweepers, for some reason, the Beagle Posse is afraid of the stick. So, when Tommy backed off a couple of steps, I was able to grab the mouse with the jaws of the stick.  I carried it into the Loo and flushed it down.

“Hey,” Tommy yelled, “that was MY mouse.”

“Well, it’s gone now,” I said. 

“But,” says Tuppy, “why did you put it in our magic water bowl?”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about that now.  It’s one in the morning.  Get in bed.  Both of you.”

As they jumped on the bed, Tommy said, “Well, OK, but don’t blame us if the field mouse army rushes you in the night.  Sweet dreams, mouse thief.”

Hog and Bev's

On the highway between Blue Eye, Missouri and Green Forest Arkansas was a high-class road house with a peeling plywood sign out by the road.  The sign read, “Hog and Bev’s.  Formerly Hog and Lil’s.”  (Evidently Hog was a bit of a sport.)

Other signs attached to the pole outlined the services of the establishment.  “Beer. Bait. Fax. Fishing Licenses. Tourist Cabins. Bar-B-Que.  (including vegetarian)”  Hog was what you might call, Vertically Integrated.  The place was also on record as having sold the most Falstaff beer in a single month of any outlet in Missouri.  This record was probably tied to the fact that the next five counties in adjoining Arkansas were dry, and sold no adult beverages.

Inside was a wobbly quarter pool table, a juke box, a tiny, splintered dance floor, a couple of Formica tables, and a bar.  Behind the bar were the neon beer signs, a Wonder Bread chalk board with the BBQ menu—Beef Plate.  Pork Plate.  Combo Plate.—and a magic marker sign that read, “Do not use bar for measuring contests.”

Hog was a fine figure of American manhood.  With a belly that was a monument to American beer.  He had once spent six months in the army, including two months as a loading dock worker in Vietnam, until he was sent home and got a medical discharge for a badly infected ingrown toenail.  In memory of his military career, Hog wore camouflage tee shirts that only gapped about three inches above his belt, and referred to beers as “bravos”, utilizing the Army phonetic for “b.”

Bev, on the other hand, as Hog observed, had, “let herself go.”  Of course, what did you expect of a woman who spent 14 or more hours a day in a beer and BBQ bar, keeping a hawk eye on her “sportin” husband (those tourist cabins were just too handy as far as Bev was concerned) ,and eating virtually nothing the bar did not provide.  Bev’s well rounded breakfast generally included a “big red”—a glass of beer with a splash of Snap-e-Tom tomato juice in it-- and a couple of pickled eggs from the jar on the bar.  Also, occasionally, a Penrose pickled sausage from the other jar on the bar, and a handful of stale corn chips from the glass-enclosed Nacho machine—“for roughage.”

Bev’s rapid weight gain after her marriage had long been a study for both the cattle industry, and the Chicago Board of Trade.  One of the regulars put it, “She’s still a half axe handle taller than she is wide.”

Of course, Hog was going nowhere.  Bev had a genuine Ozarks prenuptial agreement.  It wasn’t on paper.  It was hanging in the gun racks of the pickups driven by her three older brothers.  One of them said at the wedding reception, “Hog, you hurt baby girl, and I’m a gonna give you a 12 gauge explanation of your shortcomings.”

Bev did have her dreams.  She dreamed of operating a much higher class food emporium.  Maybe even as fancy as the place up the road that specialized in fried chicken livers and gizzards to go.  A girl has to have something to hold on to.

So, Hog and Bev ran their commercial empire in a fog of marital bliss and a beer haze.

In those days, the music business up in nearby Branson was beginning to grow, and with it, Hog’s place began to get a little more tourist traffic and out of town customers.

One afternoon, in walked two tourist women dressed in what Hog called, “The full Birkenstock Platoon.”  Hog glance up and gave his usual greeting to strangers, “Sit anywhere that don’t look too dirty.”

One of the women came up to the bar.  “First, we’d like to know just what vegetarian bar-b-que you have.”

Hog had near forgot he’d put that on his sign as a joke.  But he recovered quickly.  “Why, all of it ma’am. Everything on the menu.”  With a jerk of his thumb to the black board.  “What’ll you have?  Large plate or small plate?  Oh, by the way, that menu is a bit out of date.  We also have Venison Sausage.”

The woman gasped.  “Sir!  How can you call those meat plates vegetarian?”

Hog says, “Well, we use nothing but grass fed cattle, and corn fed hogs.  And them Bambis eat just grass, acorns, and leaves out in the woods.”

“Huh?”  The hipster lady was beginning to look like one of the deer.

Hog continued, “Grass, corn, acorns, leaves. Them’s all vegetables.  So you see, our Bar-B-Que comes vegetarian right from the source.  We build it out of vegetables from the ground up.”

It was reported that Bev nearly got run over coming back from the laundromat.  A Honda hybrid spewing a rooster tail of gravel and dust blew by her as it flew out of the parking lot and hit Highway 13 headed north.