LITMIR.BIZ

      We have to attend meetings, don’t you know, endless meetings: the Budget Committee, the Long Range Planning Group, the Weather Committee, the Commission on Cats…the list goes on and on. So, yes, after doing Bird Patrol, I was chairing a meeting of the Long Range Planning Group, when a stranger burst into the room and delivered some alarming news.

      “Hank, you’d better wake up. A bird just hit the window.”

      I didn’t recognize the guy. He must have been a new employee. I looked up from the sprawl of spreadsheets that covered the conference table, blinked my eyes, and studied his face. It was located on the front of his head and consisted of one nose, one mouth, and two eyes.

      That checked out, but I still didn’t recognize him. “Calm down. You said a herd bit the window?”

      “No, a bird hit the window.”

      “A herd of what—cattle, buffalo, deer, sheep? Be specific.”

      “Not a herd. A bird.”

      “Okay, you heard a bird, so what? Listen, pal, I’ve been hearing birds every second of every day for the past two weeks. They’re driving me nuts, so don’t tell me about birds. Furthermore, you’ve interrupted this meeting.”

      “What meeting?”

      “The meeting that was meeting. You’ve interrupted a very important…” I took a closer look at his face. “How long have you been working here?”

      “Oh…forever, I guess.”

      “Then you should know better than to burst into the muddle of a meedle.”

      “I think you were asleep.”

      “You keep talking about sheep. What are they doing on this ranch?”

      “Not sheep. SLEEP.”

      “Of course sheep sleep, but sheep have no business sleeping on this outfit. This is a cattle ranch and…” I rose from my chair, with the intention of pacing around the room. It’s something I do to concentrate the hocus of my pocus, only this time something went awry with my legs. I lurched to the left and collapsed on the floor. “Sorry. My leg must have gone to sleep.”

      “Yeah, along with everything else.”

      “I beg your pardon?”

      “You’ve been sleeping all morning.”

      “How dare you…” I hoisted myself up on all-fours and took a moment to gather my thoughts. “All right, let’s get to the bottom of this. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

      He heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes around. “I’m Drover.”

      “Wait, hold it right there. I have a runt on my staff named Drover. Does that strike you as odd?”

      “No, ‘cause it’s me. I’m the real Drover. Hi.”

      I looked closer at him and…hmm…paced a few steps away. “Drover, you could have saved us a lot of trouble if you had identified yourself, instead of blabbering nonsense about sheep and goats and buffalo.”

      “You were asleep.”

      “I was NOT asleep, and I’ll thank you to stop spreading lies! Now, for the last time, tell me about the sheep.”

      “There aren’t any sheep. A bird hit the window.”

      “We don’t have any windows.”

      “Up at the house. It keeps flying into the window glass.”

      I gave that some thought. “Oh, I see now. Yes, those birds do this every spring, crash into windows. They’re such fools.”

      “It’s a little owl. I think you know her.”

      “I don’t know any owls. I don’t socialize with owls.”

      “Remember Madame Moonshine?”

      “Never heard of her. Now, if you’ll…did you say Madame Moonshine? A little owl?”

      “Yep, that’s her.”

      I stared at the ground for a long moment. “I know her.”

      “Hee hee. I told you.”

      “Please don’t giggle and gloat when you happen to get something right.”

      Then Drover moved closer and delivered some shocking news. “If she knocks herself out on the glass, Pete’s waiting to eat her.”

      PETE?

      And so the crisis began, with Drover bringing the news that one of our precious little birdie friends was in danger of being devoured by the cat.

      Pretty scary, huh? You bet.

      Chapter Two: Rocket Dog to the Rescue

      Drover’s words caused my head to snap to attention. “What! Pete is going to…stand by, soldier, we’re fixing to Launch All Dogs!”

      Have we discussed my Position on Birds? Maybe not, but maybe we’d better. A lot of your ordinary mutts consider birds a nuisance. Ordinary mutts bark at the birds and try to chase them away.

      Me? I’ve always taken a more enlightened position. Yes, birds cause a certain amount of distraction, but THINK OF ALL THE BEAUTY THEY BESTOW UPON OUR RANCH.

      The flinches and the robinsons and the oreganos add color to a drab world. The song of the markingbird breaks the monotony of long days, and the little swillers are so graceful as they swoop and turn in the air—feathered poetry, you might say. What kind of dreary world would this be without our birds?

      But don’t expect your ordinary run of mutts to notice any of that, and most of all, don’t expect any kind of Art Appreciation from a scheming, selfish little ranch cat. Do you suppose that cats give a rip about feathered poetry or lovely bird songs? They don’t. You know what cats do with our precious little birdie friends?

      EAT THEM.

      That was the crisis facing us. Our local cat was lurking and scheming and waiting for an opportunity to cheap-shot one of the feathered visitors on my ranch, and I was just the dog to bring it to a screeching halt.

      I dived into my Rocket Dog suit, turned the dials to the Blast-Off Position, and went roaring away from the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex. Oh, you should have seen it! I went swooping over trees and buildings, and executed a smooth landing on the gravel drive behind the ranch house. There, I shucked off the RD suit and rushed to the yard gate.

      It took me several moments to reconoodle the situation and gather up the pieces of the peesle. The puzzle, that is, the puds of the piddle. The pieces of the petal. Phooey.

      It took me several moments to peddle the puddle…it took me several moments to peedle together the piddles of the…let’s just skip this.

      It really burns me up when this happens. I mean, a guy gets all excited about describing an important event, but when the words come out of his moth, they’ve turned to mush. Nonsense. Gibberish. It makes him sound…well, not too bright.

      Let’s slow things down and try this one more time. What I saw was a complicated scene. A bird, a little prairie dog owl, was fluttering its wings, hovering in front of a window on the second story of the house, and jabbering some kind of nonsense. Now and then it crashed into the window. Meanwhile…

      The cat was sitting on the sidewalk below—smirking, twitching the end of his tail, and staring up at the activity on the second level. Anyone could see that he was up to no good.

      I

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