Peppermint Patti
By Peppermint Patti
JOTR columnist
The art of detection, Sophie, is the knack for finding things before anyone else.
Smelling, hearing. seeing — we dogs are the best detectives known to the two-legger class.
Which is why they’re telling me what a great detective I am.
At the same time, they’re painting me as a cold-blooded killer.
Because I found the bush-tail.
The one that snuck into the house.
I tried to tell them.
But you know how no-tailers are.
Deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to noticing things.
They call it detective work.
It was a small bush-tail, as bush-tails go.
A young one with no common sense.
No telling how it got in.
Could be I was sleeping, Sophie — it was that time of day.
Isn’t any time a good time for a snooze?
The two-leggers went nuts.
“A squirrel! A squirrel’s in the house!”
They were frantic!
Me? Oh boy, Sophie, yes, I thought my prayers had been answered.
You know what they say, If you can’t get Mohammed to the mountain?
If you can’t get Patti to the brush-butt, bring the brush-butt to Patti.
Here it was, on my turf — lunch in the raw.
But I reckoned without the help, quote-unquote, I’d be getting from my two-leggers.
First they chased the bush-tail into a corner of the dining room. Fine. But do they let me have at it?
All of a sudden they were on the bush-tail’s side. Didn’t want the dog to hurt the poor thing.
Wait till you hear how things turned out.
Irony, Sophie, irony was the leitmotif.
The bush-tail made a beeline to their bedroom and holed up under a dresser.
Now, how am I supposed to rat the bush-tail out when it’s hunkered down under all that lumber?
Nobody thinks to just let the dog do her job.
The no-tails finally gave up.
All was quiet.
All night, not a peep from the bush-tail.
The two-leggers had their fingers crossed: Maybe the wild creature squirmed out of the house.
Dream on.
A dog knows better.
First, I heard it whimper in the hall closet. By the time I got there, it had skedaddled.
All silent.
I detected a scent in the dining room. Brush-butt, no mistake. And it heard me. It let out a squeak and I knew I had it.
Behind the piano.
Here comes the irony.
The male two-legger took my cue. Rolled the piano out.
Sure enough, the brush-butt was hiding in the woodwork of the piano.
I went at him fast and hard. Couldn’t get my maw on him — he was way down behind a wood rail.
Now the male two-legger got a bright idea. Grabbed a broom. Raked the bristles along the rail. Tipped the bush-tail into the open. I almost had him, but he leapt onto this blanket on the wall and started climbing. The two legger whacked him with the broom. Bush-tail hit the floor, scampered into the kitchen.
I could see he was headed for the basement stairs.
“Not the basement!” shouted our brave two-legger.
Frankly, Sophie, I can’t imagine locating a bush-tail in the mess down there.
So he whacked the bush-tail with the broom.
I grabbed him in my mouth — gently! — and headed for the back door.
Once again, the two-legger made a hash of it.
He pried the brush-butt out of my mouth.
And pronounced it dead on the scene.
Whom do you think they pinned this squirrel-cide on?
It’s what I mean by irony.
The way they tell it, I’m a cold-blooded squirrel killer.
Was I the one who whacked it with a broom?
If they’d kept out of it, I could have chased that pea-brained bush-tush right out of the house.
The squirrel would be alive and heckling me from the treetops.
Why can’t they let a dog do her job?
