“Sorry. I thought I had one.”
“You don’t have one.”
“Then how come it hurts all the time?”
I glared at the runt. “If you don’t have one, it can’t hurt.”
“No fooling? Gosh, I feel better already.”
“Good. I’m feeling slightly insane.”
“Course, this old leg still gives me fits. Maybe it was the leg all the time.”
“It’s been a leg for years, Drover, the very same leg you’ve always had.”
“I guess you’re right. Gosh, I feel great, Hank. Thanks a million.”
Sometimes . . . oh well.
At that very moment I was rescued from the swamp of Drover’s mind by the slamming of the screen door up at the house. My ears shot up. My eyebrows shot up. My mouth began to water. New meaning surged into my life. I leaped to my feet.
Drover had heard it too, and he leaped to his feet. “Scraps!”
“Hey Drover, a penny for your thoughts.”
“A whole penny? Oh boy! Well, let’s see here . . .”
ZOOM!
I went streaking up to the yard gate and, heh heh, was first in line for the alleged scraps. I wagged my tail and gave Sally May my most charming smile.
Her gaze went past me. “Where’s Drover?”
Who? Oh, him. How should I know? Goofing off somewhere and he probably wasn’t hungry anyway. I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t mind if I ate his share of the, uh, scraps.
She scraped the plate, and it’s funny how the sound of that fork scraping over the plate causes my mouth to . . . gurgle, slurp, drip . . . causes my mouth to water.
It also gives me a powerful urge to dive onto the scraps and wolf them down before . . . well, before they can dry up or get stale, so to speak.
And I did dive onto the scraps and I did wolf . . .
COUGH, COUGH! HARK, ULP, ARG!
Cornbread. Dry cornbread.
Were you aware that at certain stages in its growth and development, cornbread can be poisonous and very dangerous? It can be. I learned this through bitter experience, when I came very close to strangulating right there in front of Sally May.
Do you know what she said? She said, and this is a direct quote, she said, “Well, Mister Greedy McPig, if you’d chew your food, instead of gulping it down, maybe you wouldn’t strangle yourself.”
It had nothing to do with gulping or being greedy. It was her cornbread recipe. I happen to know that you’re supposed to put some kind of moisture into cornbread—milk, eggs, shortening, stuff like that. I mean, nobody can eat cornbread that’s as dry as . . . something. Horse feed. Sand. Sawdust.
No wonder she threw it out, it would have choked a horse. It’s just a shame that she didn’t label it for what it was—poisonous and toxic material.
Suppose I had choked to death right there in front of her. Imagine the terrible guilt she would have felt, and I mean for the rest of her life. Terrible burden.
One of the sad facts that we dogs must live with is that our human friends will slip us any kind of rubbish and garbage. I mean, they mess up the recipe and come up with something THEY can’t chew and THEY can’t swallow and THEY can’t stand to keep in their mouths, and what do they do with it?
Give it to the dogs.
Right. As though we spend the whole day just waiting for the next batch of burned toast, incinerated cookies, moldy ham, and sawdust cornbread.
And they actually expect us to eat the stuff!
The strange part of all this is that . . . hmmm, we usually do, which makes you wonder . . .
That’s about all the time we have to spend on Toxic Sawdust Cornbread.
The important point to remember is that I survived the ordeal, no thanks to Sally May, and became a much wiser dog.
Just as I had passed through this dangerous spell of coughing and choking, Drover came padding up from the gas tanks.
“Hi, Hank. You owe me a penny.”
“A penny for what?”
“You said you’d give me a penny for my thoughts.”
“Oh yes, so I did. Unfortunately, I had an emergency call and wasn’t able to hear all your thoughts. I’m sure I missed out on something very special.”
“Oh yeah, it was pretty exciting. I came up with three whole thoughts.”
“No kidding? Do I dare ask what they were?”
“Oh sure, I’d love to tell you . . . if I can remember. Gosh, I hope I haven’t lost ’em.”
“Yes, that would be a tragedy.”
“Let me see here.” He screwed his face into a knot and rolled his eyes around. “Okay, here we go. Thought Number One: No one knows more about being a fly than a fly.”
I stared into the huge vacuum of his eyes. “That’s a thought?”
“Yeah, you like it?”
“I . . . it leaves me speechless, Drover.”
“Gosh, thanks.”
“What’s the next one?”
“The next one. Let’s see here. Thought Number Two: There’s a pot of rainwater at the end of every rainbow.”
“Uh-huh, not bad. Let’s move on to Number Three.”
“Okay. Thought Number Three.” His eyes went blank, even more blank than they were before. “Gosh, I can’t remember. I’ve lost it.”
“That’s too bad, son. I was really looking forward to hearing it.”
“Yeah, me too, ’cause it was a wonderful thought, the best one I ever came up with.”
“That’s a real tragedy, Drover, but of course I can’t possibly pay you a penny for only two thoughts.”
“Oh darn! Now I’m really sad and upset. It almost breaks my heart, ’cause I tried so hard and worked so hard.”
“Yes, I see what you mean. And what really makes it sad is that those may have been the only three thoughts you ever came up with in a single day, and I mean in your whole life.”
“Yeah.” He was almost in tears now. “They were my very best and I was so proud of myself.”
I patted the little mutt on the shoulder and tried to comfort him in his hour of greatest need.
“Drover, this is a very sad moment and I feel that I should do something to reward you for your effort.”
You’ll never guess what he got as his reward.
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