Sleep Well Tonight, Your Beagles are Awake

WHAT?   WHERE?  WHY?

Two AM, and we were jerked wide awake by the sound of Tsunami-level destruction in the front room. An adrenaline pumping, terrified run from the back bedroom to the front of the house was accompanied by the sounds of beagles barking wildly, howling, aarrooing, slamming around the room and into the sliding glass doors, and frantic claw scraping/rattling on the glass.

I was sure we were being home invaded, and the Beagle Posse had saved our lives.  Evidently they were sure of that too.

I rushed to the window.  “What’s out there, guys?”

They spoke all at once.  I’m not even sure who said what.  “Awful.  Giant. Prehistoric. Slimy, scaley. Evil on the hoof.”

I didn’t see anything yet.  “There. There,” said Tommy.  “Right under the bird feeders.”  And then I saw the possum.

The garden intruder seemed to head for the back, and the Beagle Posse nearly knocked both humans over as they flew over the arm of the couch and bounded down the hall to the dog door to the back yard.  They were heading it off at the pass, I guess.  The noise level was still high enough I was tempted to take a count of just how many dogs were actually in the house that night.  I didn’t think only two of them had that volume.  They pushed it to Dog Eleven.

We followed them back, and even though the possum seems to have never actually entered the back yard, the excited slamming back and forth through the dog door, and the yipping, and the bouncing off the foot of the bed went on for quite some time before I calmed them enough to talk to them.

“DON’T DO THAT!” I calmly explained.  “When you scare us in the night like that, it’s really difficult to get back to sleep.  And humans don’t spend the day napping in sun spots on the couch.  We have work to do, and chores to see to.  We need our sleep.”

Tuppence just sniffed.  “Well, you need to be safe from possums too.”

I said, “I know of no human who has ever been attacked by a possum in their sleep, while safely locked in their house.”

“Google it,” said Tommy. “I’ll bet there has been.”

“Yeah, “I said.  “One in a million million chance.”

Tommy shot back, “You wouldn’t be so smug if you were the one who woke up wrestling a possum in your sheets.  We’re here to see that doesn’t happen to you.  You’re welcome.”

“I’m going to try to get back to sleep.  And if you ever wake us again with a possum alarm, and the possum isn’t actually IN THE HOUSE, it’s going to mean no raw hide chews for a week.  Got it?”

“But, if it’s in the house……..,” Tuppence began.

“Get out!  Get back to sleep!  Now!”

And I crawled back under the covers.  Foolishly thinking that beagles might learn by category, not just by specifics.

We finally got back to sleep, and slept somewhat fitfully, dreaming of wrestling possums in our sheets, until awakened for beagle breakfast at Six AM.

The very next night:

WHAT?   WHERE?  WHY?

Three am this time.  And it sounded like a 737 full of beagles had crash landed in the living room.
I went in, and things looked like the possum scene all over again.

“Dammit, Posse.  I told you not to wake us because of the possum.”

Tuppence was breathless.  “Not a possum.  Nope.  Not a possum.  We learned our lesson.  This is twice as bad.”

“Awful, awful, awful,” said Tommy.  “Horrible with masks and claws, and everything.”

I quickly did the math.  “A raccoon?”

“Two,” shouted Tommy.  “Two raccoons.”

“OK,” I sighed.  “Do you two remember the possum discussion we had just last night?  The one about not waking us up because of things out in the yard?”

“Some of it,” said Tommy.

“Well, you better remember all of it. It applies to raccoons as well.”

“What about………,” started Tuppence.

“It applies to all critters, all the time.  You better not wake us for anything in the yard that is shorter than six feet tall.”

“Is that human feet, or beagle feet?” asked Tommy.

“Anything that can’t stand flatfooted and look over the fence, I don’t want to hear about.”  And I stomped back to the bedroom.

Fool that I am, I thought to myself, “That settles that.”

And on the THIRD night, about three, I was awakened not by barking and bedlam, but by Tuppence snuffling and licking my ear, and Tommy jumping on the bed and bouncing us.

WHAT?   WHERE?  WHY?

“We just wanted to tell you,” said Tuppence, “that there’s nothing scary out in the yard, and we won’t be waking you tonight with any critter alarms.”

They jumped down from the bed and headed up the hall.

I SWEAR I saw the little jerks paw bump as they left the bedroom. I know I heard them giggle.

42d Street Beagles

There I was, sitting on the couch with my laptop, doing the essential work of trading barbs on Face Book.  I could see into the kitchen, and one end of the hall.

The Beagle Posse would periodically come panting up the hall, trot straight to their water tower in the kitchen, gulp down mighty gulps, and dripping water from their jowls, purposefully head back down the hall.  And they hadn’t said a word to me in a couple of hours.  They were on a mission.

With each trip to the water bowl, the mud on the Posse became higher.  First just paws.  Then halfway up the front legs. Then to the shoulders.  When it got to the middle of their ears, I knew I should intervene.  This had all of the signs of previous chipmunk mining days, or similar rodent-centered prospecting in the back yard.

The next time he trotted by I said, “Tommy, stop.  What’s going on.”

He slurped, tossed, “No time” over his shoulder, and hustled back down the hall.

Next was Tuppence.  I tried to get her to explain.  She said, “Busy” and disappeared down the hall.  I could hear the dog door flapping as she rushed through.

I decided I better find out. I got the treats whistle, and a couple of chunks of cheese, and whistled for the dogs.  Nothing. They didn’t appear.  That was very strange.  No, that was unprecedented.  They can smell me get cheese from the fridge across a back lawn, through a closed door, and past 4 rooms.  And the whistle for treats always brings a rush of paws.

It was time to check.  I got my cane and headed down the hall to the back door.  No telling what was happening.  It could be an escape tunnel under the fence as they played “Stalag Beagle,” or even a new dog swimming pool being excavated.  The one thing I knew was it involved a lot of beagle work, and a lot of mud.  This very combination was known to wreak havoc on both carpets and upholstery.

I looked out the sliding glass doors to the patio.  Tommy had a cave excavated under one edge, and was chest deep in it, flinging dirt and gravel out.  Tuppence was fixated with her nose pressed into one of the joints in the concrete, obviously fully inhaling whatever was under there, and serving as some kind of digging GPS system for Tommy.

I slid the door open, whistled again, and held out the cheese.  Tuppence looked up, moving only her head, and Tommy reluctantly backed out of his tunnel—presenting mud dog for inspection.  

“WHAAAT?” they both said impatiently.

When beagles ignore cheese in hand, there is definite dogduggery in play.

I was exasperated.  “Dogs, I thought we had this patio tunneling stopped.  We had to buy 4 bags of pea gravel, and two bags of sand to fill in the other tunnels you dug.”

“We found a new place,” said Tommy.

“I smell ‘em,” said Tuppence, “and Tommy found their burrow.”

“What ‘them’?” I asked.

“We’re not sure,” said Tommy, and headed back to his cave.

“Wait!” I said. “You’re tearing up the yard, undermining the patio, and you don’t know what you’re chasing?”

Tuppence looked up and sang, “Some enchanted evening, you may smell a rodent, you may smell a rodent across a crowded yard.”

Not to be outdone, Tommy began rhythmlicly clicking a claw on the concrete and sang, “When you’re a Beag, you’re a Beag all the way, from your first rabbit catch ‘til your last dying day.”

No good comes from letting beagles listen to Broadway show tunes.

“That doesn’t answer the question.   What are you chasing?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Tommy.  “Process is important, not outcome.”

“The only outcome I see is a couple of muddy dogs who are going to need baths before climbing into bed tonight.”

Tommy said, “No, we’ll just wipe the mud off on your sheets.”

I tried not to explode.  I really did.  But I was building a head of steam like a fundamentalist preacher at a Pride Parade.

Tuppence gave a low growl and said, “Bath?  Have you met my pearly white friends Mr. Cay and Mr. Nine?”

We had some paving stones waiting to be used in a garden path.  A couple of those blocked the new Tommy tunnel.  Tommy just sat staring at it.  Then he looked up and said, “Well, when does the stone roll away?”

I said, “Tommy, that’s a different story all together.”  And he began sniffing along the edges of the patio looking for a new location.

Tuppence was still sitting at my feet just inside the dog door.  I slid the human door closed, and she got up and strutted through the dog door.

As she made her entrance onto the patio, I heard Tommy sing, “Well, Hello, Tuppence, yes, hello, Tuppence, it’s so nice to see you back where you belong…..”

I’m not going to win this, am I?

There's a Bigfoot in the Boysenberries

(Yes, the names have been changed, but it sure ain’t the innocent we’re protecting here.)

There has seldom been as grand a time as the early days of the tourist industry in Branson, Missouri.  These were the days when the “shows and attractions” were home grown and home staffed, and before the Nashville/Vegas glitz invaded.

Besides the colorful locals, the summer tourist season, basically Memorial Day to Labor Day, would see an influx of late teen, early twenties performers, musicians, ride operators, cave guides, and what have yous.  Mostly what have yous. And the primary aim of all seemed to be to finish the work day so the beer night could begin.  One such group, who at times styled themselves as a fictional Roller Derby team, “The North Elm Street Ass Busters,” was well into the evening International Crisis Seminar, Shakespearean Authority Discussion, and Poker Game, when two of the late arriving Ass Busters busted in.

Bobby Jim and Bud rushed breathlessly into the room. That in itself meant nothing.  They were both out of shape heavy smokers, so they did most things breathlessly.   They had just returned from a high speed pursuit of beer on Missouri State 248 from Reed’s Spring Junction to North Branson.  248 is a dark, winding two lane blacktop through woods and small farms—unlighted, and known as one of the most unsafe highways in the state.

“We seen him!” shouted Bobby Jim.  “Damn, he was right there hitch hiking.” A few lazy eyes looked up from the beer and cards.

“Bigfoot!” explained Bud.  “Leanin’ on a mailbox.”

“Did you pick him up?” asked someone.

“Oh, HELL no!” exclaimed Bobby Jim.  “He looked way too much like my prom date’s dad.  And that Old Boy ain’t forgive me for getting her home at 6 am.”

“Nope,” said Buckwheat.  “It was an insult to his family honor to get her home before 7.”

Bud jumped in.  “Well we talked about it, but it’s not a good idea to pick up your average Bigfoot.”

Bud was the group authority.  On any topic.  Whether he knew anything or not.  The group had heard him expound at length on everything from the theory of hydraulic power (“Now, you take your run of the mill hydraulic installation.”) to the proper ratios for mixing Kool Aid (“They have shown, if you mix Kool Aid wrong, it loses all nutritional value.”)  So, from atop his mountain of misinformation, he began to enlighten the assembled.

“Your average Bigfoot,” he continued, “is always hungry.  Now, we knew that this late, the Dairy Queen was closed, and we couldn’t get him to food quickly.  Those things will turn man eater.  Also,” he rambled, “we only had that one case of beer in the back, and we didn’t want him to break into it before we got back here with it.  Plus, a drunk Bigfoot is not easy to reason with.”

Just as he was warming to his topic, Harold’s cop walkie talkie squawked.  Harold was a full time banjo player, and a part time Sheriff deputy in Taney County.   A handy guy to have around when drooling-drunk musicians and performers gathered.  He played nightly, except Sunday’s, with a local hillbilly music show called, “The Baldknobbers Jamboree.”  The original Baldknobbers, back in the late 19^th, early 20^th century, had been a group of hooded night riders dispensing vigilante justice around the region.  Some said they modeled themselves after the Klan, but were especially cantankerous due to finding themselves living in a county with no black citizens to terrorize.  Why they became legendry folk heros, with a cornball music show named after them, is a monument of the fuzziness of the average American’s understanding of history.

The warning on Harold’s radio interrupted Bud’s dump of information about drunken ape-men.  

“Trouble at the Farm,” Harold said, and ran for his car, popping the cigarette lighter Kojac light on the top, and roaring off toward Highway 76, and out to the Shepherd of the Hills Farm—one of the large tourist attractions of the area at that time. They were a big employer and tax payer, and got the attention of local law enforcement if they called for it.

The departure of the only guy who was both sober and carrying a fire arm put an end to any thoughts of a Bigfoot expedition, and the house went back to the business of beer, cards, and solving international crises.

The “Farm” where Harold was headed was actually a complex of tourist attractions build around the questionable claim that it was the original location of much of the action in a sappy 1907 novel written by Harold Bell Wright called, “The Shepherd of the Hills.”

It included a huge “Gift Shop” full of tourist tacky, a couple of faux log cabins purporting to be the residences of the characters from the book, horseback rides through “The Shepherd’s hills,” and a large outdoor theater where in summer a nightly pageant of the book was performed, complete with a winsome Ozarks lass, horses, fist fights over the favors of the lass, and a cabin that “burned down” nightly.

Of course, to service all this “authentic” history, there were several disguised and hidden modern buildings housing kitchens, warehouses, maintenance sheds and machinery, and such.

Among the Ozarks food items sold and shipped out of the gift shop was a line of Home Made jams and jellies cooked up in the commercial kitchens, packaged in fake home canning jars, and stored in boxes of overpriced sugary product stacked ready for the store.

About 30 miles by road, and 6 miles as the crow flies from the site of Bobby Jim’s and Bud’s Bigfoot, we have the entrance, under cover of darkness, of a local character with his own set of fairly large pedal accessories.  Jerome was a freak of nature, perhaps, an intellectually pretentious hillbilly in a large scale body.  Tall, with a large thrusting nose which he kept pointed skyward, a chunk of a chin protruding from constantly quaking jowls, and feet a less weighty man could have water skied on.  He also supplied to the atmosphere a highly questionable regimen of personal hygiene and about a pickup truck load of constantly offended attitude.

Most recently, Jerome had been offended by the owners of the Shepherd of the Hills farm when they terminated his employment for having been found sleeping  his shift away in one of the log cabins.  Jerome felt that the unkind things they said to him about sleeping while collecting wages constituted, “A personal affront.” 

During the “get the hell out of here” portion of the exit interview, there came a great disagreement as to the amount of, or even the very fact of, severance pay.  The owner’s position could be summed up as, “Not one damn cent.”

So, a dull blue and rust Dodge panel van cut down to a pickup carrying Jerome and a couple of his cousins was crunching up the back gate gravel drive to the jelly-jam warehouse door.  Jerome had decided that he would collect his own severance pay in the form of cases of jellies and jams.

Earlier in his employment, he had stolen a set of keys to the padlocks on the warehouses, as a contingency plan for future requirements.  There would be no “breaking” part to this breaking and entering.  As Jerome saw it, he was just balancing an injustice that had been done him.

Our burglar was no cat.  Jerome was lacking in graces, both social and physical.  Therefore, he was stealth in neither voice nor lurching locomotion.  The noises, combined with the fact that this was not his first foray onto the Farm that week, managed to alert the night watchman.  A box on the company organization chart that Jerome had failed to notice.

This watchman, the great uncle of one of the managers, was official enough looking with his Khakis, black leather utility belt, and sewn on badge.  But the only weapon with which he was entrusted was a black 6-cell flashlight, and a large ring of keys.  Therefore, after a distant look at the invading forces, he retreated to his guard shack and called the Sheriff.

That’s the call that set in motion the walkie talkie squawk to Harold, and sent him and about five other deputy cars roaring toward the scene of the crime.

Six cars, both county and reserve-deputy personal, skidded through the gravel and pinned the thieves with headlights and spotlights in the doorway of the warehouse.  The Boysenberry Hill Mob was loaded down with cases of jam, and headed to add them to the several already in the bed of the wheezing truck.

The night was filled with calls of, “Stop, halt, and what the hell, Jerome.”  (This was not the first discussion of legal statutes Jerome had engaged in with some of the deputies.)

Jerome began bellowing, “I’m only taking what I got a right to.”

To which the head deputy explained, “Shut the hell up, Jerome, and get in the cruiser.”

Weeks later, when the “Great Boysenberry Caper” as it was known around the Sheriff's office, finally made it onto the docket of the Taney County court over in Forsyth, Jerome was dumbfounded to discover that the judge ruled, under Missouri Jurisprudence, “Avenging a Personal Affront” was not considered a sufficient defense for stealing cases of jam.

The judge knew Jerome, and all of his extended family.  He knew the young man was thick headed and obnoxious, but not dangerous, so he suspended the sentence.  One thing that did not come out at the brief trial was what accounting system should be used to figure the value of jam converted to wages.

As to the jam.  Sadly, by US food safety laws, once it had been out of the control of both the wholesaler and the retailer, it could not be certified as safe for human consumption. Any that Jerome and the crew had touched had to be destroyed.  Several jars met their fate as they were destroyed on the breakfast tables of the Prosecuting Attorney, the Sheriff, and the Judge.

With the wane the early days of Branson, and the big shows moved into the area, less and less was seen or heard of the Bigfoot of Highway 248.  Local rumor has it that at the turn of the century, he was allied with a motorcycle gang out of Kansas City, and running a meth lab up in one of the Ozarks hollows.