Category Archives: humor

About a Dog and His Boys

“I love you, Horatio.  You are my only true friend in the world.” Said Bobby while giving the old collie a tight hug around the neck.

“I may only be your brother, but I like to think I’m your friend too,” said Shane, sitting on the opposite side of Horatio.

“Well, yeah… but you’re the stinky little brother.  That’s not the same as the kind of friend that a dog can be.”

“That is very true, a dog is faithful one hundred percent,” said Horatio.  “But don’t forget.  Shane is my boy too.  All the members of your family are thoroughly and equally loved by your faithful dog and rat-detective.”

“Well, of course, that is true too,” said Bobby.

“What is?  Are you talking to yourself again?” asked Shane.

“No.  Answering Horatio.”

“Oh.  Right.  The talking dog.”

Bobby punched Shane on the shoulder behind Horatio’s back.

“Really, I find the dog to be the perfect person to tell all my troubles to too,” Shane continued. “But Horatio is not our only friend.  There are others too.”

“You don’t see what it’s like in school.  They pick on me constantly.  That’s where the whole Bedwetter Bob nickname came from.”

“But Mike Murphy doesn’t call you that, does he?”

“Well, no… not frequently anyway.”

“And Blueberry Bates… she’s like your girlfriend almost.”

“No.  She’s Mike’s girlfriend.”

“But you like her a lot, too… right?”

“Well, I…”

“And you saw her naked when you were both swans and you had to take the feathers off when you got back home.”

“No, I didn’t see her naked.  Never did.  Never would.”

“What?  You had your clothes on under the swan feathers?”

“No, but… Well, we both sorta passed out when we got back home from that winter flight.”

“And you woke up with your clothes on?”

“Um… yeah.”

“Who put the clothes on your naked bodies?”

“No one did.  Um, Blueberry says that probably it was maybe only our dream-selves, or maybe our astral bodies that turned into swans.  And when we woke up, we were both back in our normal bodies.”

Shane grinned like he didn’t believe a word of it.  Of course, there were a lot of things about the whole fairy-spell thing that didn’t ring completely true.  Sometimes, when you tell yourself stories a lot, you may have convinced yourself that a good story was true even though, deep inside, you knew it wasn’t completely true.

“Why would it matter to you if I’ve seen Blueberry naked anyway?”

“Well, you know… she has… um… boy parts.  I wonder what they look like.”

“You should never wonder about something like that.  It’s her private business.  And if I ever had the chance to look… well, I wouldn’t, okay?”

“Did you ever have the chance?”

“I don’t think so.  But that doesn’t matter.  She and Mike are my good friends.  And he loves her.  I can’t argue with that.”

“Even if you loved her too?”

“Even if… Wait!  Now you’re invading my privacy!”

“Okay!  Sorry… sorry.”

They didn’t talk for a few minutes.  Bobby just glared at Shane.  When Bobby looked away, he still didn’t say anything more.

“My, that was certainly tense,” said Horatio, blowing smoke rings from his imaginary pipe.

“I guess I do love her too… as a friend,” Bobby whispered.

“Of course, you do,” Shane answered softly.

“Look, I see a rat!” barked Horatio.

“Where?” asked Bobby.

“There!” said Shane, pointing.

It was apparently Whitewhiskers Billy.  He was sorta stumbling through the yard like he was drunk or something.

“Rabies?“ asked Shane.

“Poison,” assured Bobby.

Horatio, in his eagerness to get the intruder, pushed hard through the screen door, and would have broken it if it didn’t luckily open outward instead of inward.

As speedy as Horatio had ever been for as long as they had known the old dog, he now closed on the fleeing rat and swatted it onto its back.   Then he grabbed it by the throat, and he shook the life out of it

“Bobby, Grandpa poisoned the rats.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, if he eats it, won’t he get poisoned too?”

In a flash, Bobby was out of the screen porch and out to where Horatio was dismembering Whitewhiskers Billy.  The rat died with a snort.  Bobby pulled  Horatio off of most of what was left of the dead rat.

There was blood on Horatio’s muzzle. He swallowed something. Bobby dreaded to think of what it might have been.

The Evil that is the Rat Lair

It is located in the deepest, darkest place in the very heart of the barn.  Underneath the pig-chow storage bin.  Down where it smells like wet grain, festering and percolating with evil.

Professor Rattiarty, Whitewhiskers Billy, and Darktail Ralph were the only remaining rats in the gang.  The cat was banished for now.  And it was all right according to the ways of evil rats.  You see, those three truly vile rodents had founded the gang, built the lair out of an old packing crate located under all the sacks of food and supplements.  They had also all three participated in chewing out the tunnels through the wooden walls and sacks of feed.

“How do you know they built the place, Bobby?  That’s not something that Horatio’s nose can tell by smell.”  Shane squinted in mock suspicion.

“I just know it… okay?  Horatio and me figured it all out a long time ago.  Now, listen!”

Professor Rattiarty called the meeting to order with a snarl as the three were in a circle around the pan of strange green food that Darktail Ralph had discovered on the other side of a wall.

“It has the old grandfather’s smell on it.  It is something he must’ve left in the barn,” said Ralph.

“Is it food?  Can we eat it?  Maybe it’s his lunch and he left it here for later,” said Billy.

“No, no. It is obviously poison,” said the Professor.

“How do you know?  It smells like food,” said Ralph.

“Do you not smell something slightly off about it?  It has a faint hint of strange potions they use around their wheeled things.  It has the look and odor of things that proved to be poison before when the old man plotted against us.”

“Oh!  In that case, we must not eat of it.  Leave it where we discovered it.  Maybe the old man will eat it himself.”  Billy’s eyes sparkled as he knew he had to be right.

“The old man is not so dumb that he would ingest his own poison.  He is much too careful for that.  We just don’t eat it!” declared Ralph.

“Gentlerats, don’t misunderstand me… as you do so at your own peril… but we WILL partake of this poisonous food.”

“But why, Professor?”  complained Billy.

“Because that is how we will defeat this trap.  We ingest barely enough of it to make ourselves slightly sick.  We will, in this way, make ourselves resistant to the poison over time.  In fact, we made ourselves immune back in the old days.”

“But what if we get too much poison, by accident, say…?”  Billy complained with hesitation.

“Then you will die a horrible, painful death,” sneered Ralph.

“But if you do make the mistake, dear William of the White Whiskers, you must drag yourself out of the barn where Horatio T. Dogg will smell you, pounce on you, and eat you.”

Ralph and the Professor both laughed.  Billy was confused.

“Why do I let the dog eat me?”

“Because you will be full of poison in that case, and it will kill the dog,” sneered Ralph./

“Kill Horatio with the old man’s own poison!” crooned the Professor, his voice dripping with menace.

“Let’s dig in,” said Ralph.

“But slowly… carefully…” suggested the Professor.  “You don’t want it to kill you if you can help it.”

“Very true,” said Ralph while crunching up the poison gingerly in his mouth.

“Ummm, this actually tastes good!” said Billy.

“Don’t eat it so fast you fool,” said the Professor.

“Wow!” said Shane to Bobby.  “You tell that story like it was a cartoon show on TV.”

“Thanks, but it’s just the way Horatio told it to me,” said Bobby with a grin.