Mrs. Andersen was shaving the fur off Bart, her Irish wolfhound, with a pair of electric sheep shears. The reason for Bart’s de-furring was not lice, but a chance encounter with a skunk. Bart was always tangling with something unsavory. Once, he came home with a bandy-legged trout between his jaws. Trout weren’t supposed to have legs, but this one did, just like a frog. Another time, Bart got an eye infection from going after a poisonous Big Sur spitting mole. Almost went blind. So this was nothing—his third utter and complete humiliation by skunk musk.

You’d think he’d learn….

A commercial appeared on the television that Mrs. Andersen had set outside on top of an upended garbage can so she could watch Wheel of Fortune while she worked. The commercial was for a feminine hygiene product that Mrs. Andersen was long past using, so she turned to Bart and said: “I know you don’t like being naked, big fella, but how else will you ever be fresh and unscented after wrestling a skunk?”

The question was rhetorical. Bart merely shivered and made no response. He had to admit that he stunk.

Smells…. Mrs. Andersen had experienced a lot of them in her lifetime. She thought back on some of the more memorable ones. What came to her first was the smell of Mr. Andersen’s farts in bed. How shocked she’d been to hear them when they were first married. He used to just heave them out while he was fast asleep… unholy sputtering groans from his sphincter that stunk to high heaven. They always woke her up. It sounded like the very devil himself was talking under the sheets. She took to keeping a bottle of French perfume next to the bed: “L’Air du Printemps.” Used it to mist the air whenever Mr. Andersen let loose another stinker. Now she couldn’t even smell French perfume without thinking she smelled a fart, too.

Mr. Andersen had ruined Paris for her. Not that she’d ever gone far from Pine Bluff—but if she had….

Other smells came to mind. Dishwashing soap and bacon grease. Percolating coffee. Freshly mown hay. That smell of ammonia and old straw in the henhouse. Those were some of her favorite smells. They smelled like her life.

Then there was the very odd smells, the once-in-a-lifetime smells. That time an old cougar came down out of the hills and sprayed on her front porch. The smell of the cotton candy machine that caught fire at the Mid-State Fair in 1952 or ’53. That crazy Chinese salesman who came out to the farm trying to sell her ginseng roots and little silk purses that smelled of mothballs. The stench of a dried-up sand shark on the beach, a rotten elephant seal, a dead bear in the henhouse, and Ernest, poor Ernest…

Why did death always have such a stink to it? Even Mr. Andersen smelled a little gamey after she found him dead of a heart attack on the kitchen floor a few days before his 71st birthday. She was all alone now… if she died, she might not be found for weeks. And then just imagine the stink!

Those poor undertaker people… why in heaven would anyone choose to go into that line of work?

The sound of distant clucking brought Mrs. Andersen out of her olfactory reveries. “Oh listen, Bart… the chickens are back.” She cupped her hands to her mouth and cried out like a nightingale with a toothache: “Here chickie-chickiee-CHICKIEEES!”

Mrs. Andersen’s chickens proceeded along the dirt path to the farmhouse in a very orderly, unchicken-like fashion. They were marching in military lockstep, row upon endless row of them, each row ten abreast. These were serious chickens. Storm trooper chickens. And in their midst, a larger figure accompanied them on two huge, vaguely reptilian feet.

Mrs. Andersen saw none of this. She was pointing her face up toward the sky, concentrating on her chicken-calling: “Here chickie-chickie….”

Bart, however, was aghast.

A cloud passed in front of the sun. Mrs. Andersen paused to adjust her glasses. “Here chick—”

A robotdinosaurooster? 

“Oh my…” Mrs. Andersen said as a scaly, partially feathered hand lunged for her throat.

She was lifted into the air as if she weighed nothing at all. “Upsy-daisy!” she squeaked. Then she started strangling. She felt her oversized golf shoes go flying off her wildly kicking feet.
Her chickens had betrayed her! She had a feeling she wouldn’t get to watch the end of her game show. Not unless Bart came to the rescue.

Bart did no such thing.

•     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •

Bart watched his former owner get deboned by a gigantic Sunbeam electric carving knife. That was something new. He sort of wanted to go over there and take a closer look, but he felt self-conscious about not having any fur. Chewed-up shoes floated through his memory. He wondered who would feed Alpo to him now. There was the scent of something tragic in the air, something nearly as tragic as not having enough Alpo.

The chickens were eating Mrs. Andersen.

Bart wondered how she tasted. Those intestines looked like big greasy sausages.
Once, when he was trotting around with a spitty tennis ball in his mouth, Mrs. Andersen had looked at him and laughed. Her laughter had stirred something deep within him. It had made him mourn for his wild ancestors—his snarling, yipping, biting, howling ancestors. They were unsullied by civilization, too cunning for domestication. They bared their teeth and tasted hot blood and bone. Plumes of steam rose up from the animals they gutted. Their hackles were made hoary with snow. Bart felt this heritage stirring in his own blood, and he vowed that day to go out and bite the mailman.

But the chickens had gotten to the mailman first, darn them.

He looked up at the big creature wielding the carving knife and thought, Maybe we can be buddies….

•     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •

Mickelodia’s journey to Pine Bluff was uneventful. All she’d had to do was go into the Mexican grocery store and explain her plight to Mrs. Soto, who’d been selling Charlene’s Twinkies to Mickelodia for the last ten years. An agreement was reached in which Mrs. Soto would lend Mickelodia money for bus fare to Pine Bluff—plus two quarts of orange juice, almonds, and some deli-sandwiches—in exchange for her promise to scout the new location for grocery store potential. Mrs. Soto wanted to get out of Los Angeles as badly as Mickelodia did.

It was getting dark when the bus finally dropped Mickelodia off in front of the Pine Bluff General Store. Wilfred Logan—if he still owned the place—had closed up for the night. In fact, all the shops were closed. Mickelodia thought of all the people she had known in Pine Bluff, and who would be most likely take her in on such short notice. She decided on Mrs. Andersen, who had been like a grandmother to her when she was growing up. It didn’t matter that Mrs. Andersen’s house was a ways out of town. Mickelodia had been sitting for about seven hours. It would be good to stretch her legs.

When she got to Mrs. Andersen’s, she didn’t find anyone home. She rang the front bell, then went around to the back and knocked on the kitchen door, but no one answered. For all she knew, Mrs. Andersen was dead. Ten years had gone by, after all, and even back then Mrs. Andersen had been old.

Mickelodia decided to spend the night in the forest. As she walked from behind the house into Mrs. Andersen’s driveway, she saw a nude wolfhound prancing in the moonlight. He was carrying some small creature, tossing it up in the air with his teeth, then pouncing with his front paws and doing some frisky barking when it hit the ground. As Mickelodia passed, she took a closer look and decided the dog had a dead mouse.

Actually, it was Mrs. Andersen’s nose.