Sneaky Pie for President (16 page)

“Never happen,” the bird squawked pessimistically. “Huge special interests are out only for themselves.”

“I agree,” said Tally, still upset not to be considered vice-presidential material. The Jack Russell actually did think about some things, contrary to popular opinion.

“You do what you have to do,” the midsize bird said, encouraging the cat, “but let me give you one little example from the world of woodpeckers. When we show up in large numbers in any location, it means the trees are infested. There are always bugs in trees, but when we woodpeckers gather among a farmer’s cultivated trees, that means the farmer will lose his crop. So what do they do? They spray. I see it all the time. This nasty poison hurts us, and it does them not a bit of good. By the time they identify the problem of bugs, the trees are already well on their way to dying.”

Sneaky wanted to clarify the woodpecker’s position. “You’re saying no chemicals?”

“Yes. Let the trees die. They will anyway. Cut them down. Use them for sawdust. Even if us woodpeckers get most all the bugs from the trees, the damage has been done. So core out the roots or pull up the stumps, let the land rest for a couple of years. After that, the humans can either turn it back into a pasture or try again with a different species of tree. All too often I see them replanting without enough thought. All they’re doing is creating more food for those same bugs years down the line.”

“Wouldn’t the solution be to kill the larvae?” Tucker couldn’t imagine eating bugs, but then the woodpecker couldn’t imagine rolling in decayed flesh.

“That’s not as easy as you would think,” said the bird. “The larvae survives when the tree is alive. Then it hatches and eats the tree. When the tree is dead, the bugs are done with it. Not every single kind of bug works that way, but most do. The thing I’m telling you,
Madame
Candidate, is that there are no short-term solutions to certain problems. Unless our forests are completely denuded, I personally will always have something to eat. The whole issue does raise the rather interesting question: What’s a good bug and what’s a bad bug?”

“A ladybug is a good bug.” Tally liked them. They were cute.

“Until there are far too many.” Tucker was catching on
to the Downy’s drift. “No human wants to see too many ladybugs crawling across her screened windows.”

“Right,” agreed the bird. “We can all agree that Japanese beetles are bad. Boll weevils are bad, but any bug can break bad, if you know what I mean. Well, it’s the same with some animals. If you have an overpopulation, things go to hell in a hurry.”

“I understand.” Tucker did.

“So if we see swarms of you, problems,” Tally said.

“Listen for our calls,” said the bird. “During spring, you’ll hear all the different woodpeckers calling to one another. Then it quiets down, and mostly what you hear are territory claims, some fussing at a nest occasionally. The trees are fine. They live and die like we do. Some trees live for centuries—pines, thirty years. I mean, the loblollies—those kinds, the ones really susceptible to bugs—are short-lived. Hardwoods usually last longer than pines, and they will get some insects, not so many damaging ones. I usually eat ants on hardwoods; some butterflies and moths place their chrysalids on branches. I’ll eat those, too, but really, hardwoods are pretty safe. Humans should avoid all their sprays and potions. You can try and outsmart nature, but you won’t succeed.”

“Mom says once chestnuts were everywhere, then they got sick and died,” Sneaky recalled. “All of them.”

“Before my time.” The bird opened one wing while leaving the other at his side. It felt good to stretch.

“Turn of the last century,” the tiger cat informed him. “But you’re right, I’m sure. Bugs seem to prefer certain species.”

“Cultivated tastes.” The bird laughed at his pun.

The other animals did, too, then turned at the sound of the human’s ATV starting up. Always making a racket, the humans could be as noisy as any animal.

“She made short work of that.” The Downy Woodpecker admired hard labor. “The culvert, too.”

Tucker smiled. “She’s covered in mud.”

“I don’t think our human will ever make the cover of
Vogue
!” Tally smiled, too.

“Might make the cover of
The Progressive Farmer
.” Sneaky thought that would be just wonderful, especially if she was featured in the photo in the C.O.’s arms.

That would win the farm vote!

A Warrior’s Death

The next day dawned clear. At 6:00
A.M.
, the mercury already nudged 54°F. The day looked promising. The roadwork and cleaning out the small culverts had been accomplished by the C.O. herself.

The animals scooted out of the house as the human headed for the barn, low mist obscuring the pastures, the honking of geese rising through the mists as the noisy birds chatted, waddled this way and that, and ate.

Each night before retiring, the human checked the water buckets in the barns, the water troughs outside. As the nights were warm, most of the horses could stay outside, though. She always brought in the two blind horses, the pony, and one-eyed Jones. Upon hearing the house cats come in, the barn cats raced across the hayloft.

“What are you all doing up there?” Sneaky called.

“Morning exercise,” the black-and-white cat, Dezi, announced. “Come on up and join us.”

“Later.” Sneaky walked beside Tucker as the two animals checked the feed room.

A cat could never be too sure about mice. Those sharp rodent front teeth could chew through the thickest wood. For this reason, all the food bins had been lined in zinc. Special feeds were poured into metal garbage cans. Still, the ever-crafty mice might make progress if a tiny hole inadvertently appeared in a garbage can. This was usually caused by a sharp object just nicking the side as it fell from human hands. Then those mice would worry that little spot because the luscious odor of the commercial feed filled the air. Mostly, though, the mice relied on the folded feed bags, tied up with twine, then carried to the dump once a week.

Chewing the back end of those bags off was easy. The reward was sweet tidbits.

Tucker frowned. “They’ve been here. I smell them.”

Tally trotted into the feed room. “Bet we have the fattest mice in Virginia.” Then she looked at Pewter, who had joined them. “Speaking of which, the fattest cat, too.”

Pewter unleashed a straight right to the jaw. “Creep.”

“Ouch!”

“The only reason you’re thin is you haven’t been spayed,
an event the rest of us pray for daily. You’ll blow up like a broody hen when you’re fixed,” Pewter predicted.

“You say.” The Jack Russell took a precautionary step backward.

Leaving the feed room, Sneaky called up to the barn cats. “Hey, you guys aren’t catching any mice. They’ve chewed the bottoms off the feed bags.”

Dezi replied, “Well, Pewter gets into them, too, but the bags are empty. We’d kill the mice if they messed with full ones, but the C.O. always dumps them in the bins or the cans. We aren’t lazy.”

This declaration was followed by a loud grunt, then the
click
of a bill as the barn owl up in the cupola let out a laugh.

The barn cats looked upward, wisely refraining from an argument. These barn cats were a wild lot, to be sure, but they knew better than to sass the powerful owl.

Sneaky followed Jones, Blue Sky, and Shamus as the C.O. led them out of their special paddock. The dogs tagged along, too. Pewter reposed on a fleece saddlepad in the tack room. She felt she’d had enough exercise for the day, and it wasn’t yet seven o’clock!

Each horse was turned around to face the human. She patted them on the neck, then their halters were slipped off. Then the three horses whirled to run to the end of the paddock. Despite the visual limitations of Blue Sky and
Shamus, their senses were so keen they knew the dimensions of the paddock. They never ran into the fence or into each other. Eager to be free this glorious morning, when the human opened the gate, Jones, Blue Sky, and Shamus happily loped into the early sunshine.

The cats and dogs ambled through that pasture into the next. When all the gates were opened to the other upper pastures, the horses could enjoy thirty acres with varied terrain, watered by a strong running creek. With his one good eye showing the way, Jones still surely loved to gallop. Disappearing over the hill, he then came charging back up.

Before she slipped under the fence, Sneaky turned just in time to see Jones stumble. She waited for a moment. He recovered, then went down again.

“Hurry!” the tiger cat yelled to her friends.

They rushed to the aged horse. He lay on his side, his breathing rapid and shallow.

Tucker licked the old fellow’s nose. “Jones, Jones, are you all right?”

“Ah.” He blew out from his nostrils. “My legs don’t want to work.”

Tally hit the turbo, turning tail and running for the human. She was puttering in the tractor shed.

Sneaky sat by Jones’s head, his large brown eyes soft. “Do you hurt?”

“No. I feel weak.” A deep breath followed this. “Pussycat,
my dear friend, my time has come. Sit with me awhile. You, too, Tucker.”

“We won’t leave,” Tucker reassured the horse, as she saw the human running toward them, Tally leading the way.

The C.O. knelt beside Jones, pulling back his lips to look at his gums. She placed her fingers on the big vein running along his neck.

“Jones, I’ll call the vet.” The C.O. met Sneaky’s eyes: Both of them knew he was dying. The human didn’t want the beloved horse to suffer.

“No need,” Jones whispered. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

She ran to the tack room of the barn as the three animals sat with Jones. Hearing the C.O.’s call, Pewter jumped off the saddlepad and hurried to her friends.

“Jones, don’t die,” Pewter wailed, as Sneaky shot her a sharp “shut up” look.

“We all have to go sometime,” the old Thoroughbred replied with great sense.

The horses in the other pasture trotted up to the fence-line.

Jones lifted his head, “Ozzie, you’ll be the oldest now. Keep them in line.”

Blue Sky walked up, Shamus by his side, as the pony depended on the Saddlebred more than the other way around. Each of Jones’s paddock mates nuzzled him.

Shamus let out a high nicker. “Jones, what will we do without you?”

“Live.” Jones laid his head back down, for it felt so heavy. “You’ll go on.”

“I’ll take care of things,” the blind Saddlebred promised.

“I know.” Jones breathed faster now. “You all look after the human. I’ve been with her over half her life. She needs all the horse sense you can give her. She has a good heart. Promise me.”

They all promised, and Tally started to sob in anguish.

Pretty soon the barn cats came down to say goodbye, as did the barn swallows. Jones had lived so long that generations of barn swallows knew him. All the animals knew him. He’d always been there, like the mountains.

The human came back, a towel over her shoulders. She sat on the grass beside her oldest animal friend.

“It will be okay, buddy.” She rubbed the towel over his face and along his neck, hoping it would feel good.

“You saved me. You’ve saved a lot of us,” Jones managed to say. “I’ve had a good life. Thank you for it.” He raised his head slightly, looked at her, then laid it down.

The gathering of friends waited. Fortunately, the vet was on call in the area, reaching them within a half hour.

Fading fast, Jones heard the truck tires. “Sneaky Pie, don’t ever stop fighting for what’s right. You can still save the animals.”

The cat rubbed her head on his. “I won’t,” she said sadly.

The vet calmly walked down the hill, sensitive not to frighten the other horses. She placed her hand on the C.O.’s shoulder.

“Thanks for getting here so fast, Anne.”

The vet knelt down beside Jones, checked him out. “His systems are shutting down.”

“I don’t want him to suffer.”

Anne walked back up to her truck, filling a syringe as the C.O. slipped halters back over Blue Sky and Shamus. The human walked the two blind horses back to their stalls.

When she rejoined Anne, the C.O. stroked Jones’s head.

Tally really wailed now.

“Tally, I can’t see you anymore, but I sure can hear you,” Jones rasped, and Sneaky couldn’t help it, she laughed.

Then Jones was gone.

The animals stayed at his side as the humans walked up to the barn.

Two hours later, Burly Connick drove up the farm road with his ditch witch and began to dig a deep hole.

Sneaky and the human watched as he prepared to push the body in. The C.O. climbed up on the machine so he could hear her, hanging on to the bars. “Burly, lay him out so he faces the mountains. He loved the mountains.”

And it was done.

As she paid Burly, the man said, “You two been together a long time.”

“Yes, we were, over thirty years.”

“My little Trixie,” he named his dachshund, now departed, “lived to fifteen, and when she died I cried like a baby. A baby.” He reached for the chew in his pocket with one hand as he took the check with the other. “I think they know more than we do.”