LITMIR.BIZ

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. On December 19, we got a snow. On December 20, it snowed again. On December 21 the overflow of the septic tank froze up, making it impossible for me to bathe.

      By December 22 we had four inches of snow on the ground and fellers, it was cold. It was that morning, at approximately 9:00 o’clock, that I awoke from a deep sleep and noticed something very peculiar.

      My bed was shaking.

      My bed consisted of two old gunnysacks and under normal conditions it didn’t shake. Some­thing strange was afoot, and it was my job to check it out.

      I opened one eye, perked one ear, and I sniffed the air. In the security business we call this a preliminary scan. In other words, at that point I wasn’t using all my sensory equipment. There’s no sense in squandering your gifts, no matter how many you have.

      Well, I sniffed and I looked and I listened. I smelled diesel fuel but I always smelled diesel in my bedroom because the tank on the north side leaked and the cowboys on our outfit were too lazy to fix it. Now, if they’d had a fuel leak in THEIR bedrooms, they would have fixed it pronto, but this was only Hank’s bedroom so nobody was worried about it.

      Anyway, I sniffed and I looked and I listened. And then I heard it: a strange grunting sound. And my bed was shaking again. I had no choice but to open my other eye and put my other ear into service.

      I scanned the area from horizon to horizon and suddenly realized that there was something in my bed—something small, white, short-haired, and stub-tailed.

      “Drover?”

      “Uhhh.”

      “Drover?”

      “Huh?”

      “Get out of my bed.”

      “What?” He lifted his head and stared at me. His eyes were out of focus. “Hank, is that you?”

      “Who else would be in my bed at this hour?”

      “I don’t know. Oh Hank, I had a terrible dream!”

      “You’re fixing to have a genuine nightmare if you don’t get your carcass out of my bed.”

      “I dreamed we had snow on the ground and it was bitter cold and I was freezing and . . .” He looked around. “Oh my gosh, my dream’s come true.”

      “This is your lucky day, son. Now scram.”

      He raised up and stood there shivering. “Oh Hank, I’m so cold and miserable! Let me stay in bed with you where it’s warm.”

      “No dice. Did you know that you grunt in your sleep?”

      He stared at me. “Grunt?”

      “That’s right. You’re worse than a bunch of hogs. A guy can’t sleep with all that nonsense going on in his bed.”

      “No, that wasn’t me, Hank, honest it wasn’t. I woke up in the night and I could have sworn I saw,” he rolled his eyes around and dropped his voice to a whisper, “a bunch of hogs—right over there!”

      “Do you expect me to believe that?” He nodded. I chuckled. “Well, I’ve got news for you, Drover. I don’t believe anything I hear and only half of what I see, so there’s very little chance that I’ll swallow your story.”

      “Well, okay. Sure was a good one though.”

      “I’m sure it was. Now, if you’ll just . . . were they wild hogs or domestic?”

      “Wild.”

      “Nonsense. We don’t have wild hogs around here. What makes you think they were wild?”

      “Well, they had big long white things . . .”

      “We call them tusks. Go on.”

      “And

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