The Case of the Dinosaur Birds. John R. Erickson

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 and had decided to keep his mouth shut. Good idea. I mean, the cat had become a prime suspect in this case.

      When he backed away from the fence, I moved in and began sweeping the entire area with Snifforadar. If Pete had pulled the job, surely Snifforadar would pick up traces of bacon scent. I did a thorough sweep of the ground but came up with nothing but readings of cat and biscuit.

      I entered all the information into Data Control and waited for it to come up with a solution. A moment later, a message flashed across the screen of my mind. “You’ve got a flea biting your left ear.”

      Ouch! It was true. I’d been so busy with other things, I hadn’t even noticed. Right then and there, I put the investigation on hold, dropped my bottom side to the ground, and began hacking my left ear with powerful sweeps of my left hind foot.

      The good news was that I vaporized the flea. The bad news was that I still had no idea who had robbed my bacon. And that was bad news.