The Case of the Buried Deer. John R. Erickson

with anyone, and stories that nobody would believe anyway.

      As Slim was picking himself off the floor, I went to Taps of Sympathy on the tail section and switched on a facial expression that said, “I saw nothing. Honest.”

      He set the chair back where it belonged, brushed a briar patch of hair out of his eyes, heaved a sigh, and sat down, this time in a civilized manner. He threw one leg over the opposite knee and stared at his foot, which was caked with mud.

      A heavy silence fell upon us, then he spoke. “A man gets a little crazy in a drought.”

      Oh? I had hardly noticed.

      “When we need a good soaking rain and get a stinking little shower…well, it hurts, pooch. You can understand that.”

      Right, exactly, and I was doing my best to share his pain.

      “My feet got muddy.”

      Well…yes. Duh. When you walk barefoot through mud, your feet get muddy.

      “Hank, I’ve got an idea on how we can fix that.”

      Oh brother. I knew this was coming.

      “Come here.” I went. “Lie down and hold still.”

      I did as I was told. I lay there like a door mat, whilst he wiped his muddy feet on the hair of my back and ribs, and cleaned his toes with the flap of my left ear. Drover watched from the other side of the porch, out of harm’s way, and GRINNED.

      “There! Good dog. Anybody who says you’re worthless just don’t know the full story.” He yawned and stretched. “I wonder what we could rustle up for breakfast.” He pushed himself out of the chair and looked down at me. “How’d you get so muddy?”

      He thinks he’s funny.

      He brushed some of the mud off my coat. “I guess you can come in, and I might even share my breakfast. How does that sound?”

      Breakfast? I was no pushover, but…well, a good breakfast can heal a lot of wounds.

      I followed him into the house, and I’m proud to report that Drover wasn’t invited. Good. He didn’t deserve to be part of our Inner Circle. Don’t forget that he had grinned while I was being used as a foot-scraper. That would go into his record—grinning at the misfortunes of a superior officer.

      I followed Slim into the kitchen—a loyal dog preparing to share Precious Breakfast Moments with his cowboy companion. He gave me a wink. “How ‘bout some bacon and eggs?”

      Slurp. Perfect. Yes!

      He opened the ice box door, bent over, and looked inside. “Well, I see that we’re out of bacon, but that’ll work, ‘cause we’re out of eggs too.”

      Oh brother.

      He reached inside. “Wait. Lookie here, pooch, some left-over boiled chicken gizzards.”

      Chicken gizzards! For breakfast?

      He brought out a plastic bread bag containing three pounds of gizzards that he had boiled up who-knows-when. He dumped them out on a paper plate. I guess that was his idea of “food presentation,” dumping a mess of cold grayish-green chicken gizzards onto a paper plate.

      Have you ever looked at a bunch of boiled gizzards in the morning? Let me tell you something, it’s shocking. A cold gizzard reminds you of something that came out of a dead chicken, and you have to wonder…what kind of man eats those things for breakfast? And why?

      I mean, this is the modern age and we have grocery stores. Even Twitchell has one. They sell things like bacon and eggs, steak and pork chops. All you have to do is drive into town and do a little shopping.

      Oh well. A dog can’t spend his life grieving over all the bacon and eggs that didn’t show up. Remember the Wise Old Saying? “There will be days when Life offers nothing but cold chicken gizzards for breakfast.” That’s a great Wise Old Saying, and it hits Truth right between the nose.

      But to be fair about it, I had to admit that while the gizzards didn’t look very appetizing, they smelled pretty…sniff, sniff…what was that smell? Gag!

      Even Slim noticed, and he had the nose of a brick. His eyes widened and his lip curled. “Good honk, I think they’ve started to decompose.”

      Decompose! What kind of zoo was this?

      He rushed to the back door and threw them outside. On his way back, he looked at me and said, “Don’t eat ‘em, pooch. They’re past their prime.”

      I had never been so insulted. Did I look dumb enough to eat a pile of decomposing chicken gizzards? Let me address that question in two stages.

      Stage One: I most certainly was NOT dumb enough to eat a pile of crawly decomposing chicken gizzards that smelled so gruesome, he’d pitched them out into the back yard. What kind of moron…

      Stage Two: On the other hand, a dog must keep his options open. Until we actually ran tests, we wouldn’t know whether they had become toxic or were just, well, passing through a Cheesy Phase.

      See, cheese smells cheesy because it’s aged, and that’s crucial to this whole discussion about our food supply. Many types of food improve during the Aging Process, don’t you know, and we would have to suspend judgment on the material in the back yard until we, uh, received an update on the Breakfast Situation.

      It’s pretty amazing that a dog would pay such close attention to diet and nutrition, isn’t it? You bet. Your ordinary run of mutts never give it a thought. They’ll eat anything—scraps, garbage, and the factory-made sawdust products that come in a fifty-pound sack and are passed off as “dog food.”

      On this outfit, we make a serious study of what we put into our mouths. We never forget that what we eat is who we are. Food feeds the mind, and the mind of a dog is an awesome thing.

      Now, where were we? I have no idea. Tell you what, let’s erase the blackboard, change chapters, get ourselves organized, and regroup on the other side.

      I hope you enjoyed our Unit on Nutrition.