I composed the mental movie. I imagined all the chickens going to that plate of food, taking a piece of food in their beaks, bringing it to me, and leaving it at my feet for me to eat! I was sitting under another table nearby, next to my humans. I played the mental movie over a few times in my own head, just to make sure nothing awful happened. It looked great!
In my mind's eye, I searched out the dozens of chicken and rooster minds spread out all around me. Chicken minds are kind of boring. Not one of them was angry, excited, happy, or even frustrated about anything. I didn't even sense any fear, which is the emotion most associated with, you know, being chicken. It probably helped that these were pet chickens on a ranch where no one ate their eggs and the cats weren't allowed to mess with them and the fences kept the coyotes out. Yeah, probably that helped.
I couldn't believe how easy it was to play the mental movie for all the chickens. As soon as I found their minds, I played it. Simple as that.
Immediately, all the chickens in the area swooped down on that abandoned food and started pecking at it. The first few arrived at my feet and dropped their little pieces of hamburger, or bun, or potato. So far, so good! I licked up the scraps of food and waited for them to move on so that the others could drop their beak-fulls of bounty.
Only, they didn't move on. That was where the mental movie ended, so they were free to go on about their business, only they didn't have any business. They stayed right where they were.
Other chickens started to peck on the front chickens' backs with their beak-fulls of food, telling them to move away so that they could get to me with the food they had so kindly brought over for me. They all started that funny squawking noise, and more and more of them kept coming. Feathers started to fly.
Humans were starting to notice, and to tap each other on the shoulder and point out the spectacle of a dozen chickens all fighting to get close to a dog!
"Why do they all want to be near that dog?"
"I don't know, Billie. Eat your meat."
"Look at all those chickens!"
"Yeah, woo! Pass the salt."
Meanwhile, someone had picked up the emptying plate of food and tossed it in the garbage. This did not dissuade the many chickens which were still arriving. Oh no! Rather, the chickens jumped into the garbage can and dug for the plate of food.
"Wow, I'm pretty persuasive with the chicken population," I was thinking. "This could come in handy!" I puffed out my chest almost as big as Lido had when he told me of his success with Skil. I was a big shot chicken herder. Yes, I was. I wondered if I could get any special recognition for that. Was there someone I could notify?
And then my master, who had me on a leash, said something I had not foreseen when I composed my movie.
"Where's the men's room?"
"Over there by ice cream stand."
"In that corner, up against the fence?"
"Yeah. Want me to hold Raffle's leash?"
"Nah, I'll take him with me."
Of course, the chickens followed us over toward the ice cream stand, trying all the time to drop the food at my feet. I had to keep up with my master, though, and he was walking with purpose, if you know what I mean. He opened the door of the men's room and pulled me in there with him. He walked right past the urinal and into a stall, where he did some business for several minutes.
I could hear pandemonium outside the men's room door. Half of it was all the chickens squawking as they piled up on top of each other and tried to get through the door. The other half was the havoc the chickens wreaked as distracted humans walked away with ice cream cones in their hands.
Splat! Splat! Ice cream hit the cement patio as unsuspecting patrons tripped over chickens.
"Louisa! You've spilled ice cream on your nice new jacket!"
"What the?"
"Eeeeeeaaaaaaak!"
"Someone do something about all these chickens!"
Yeah, someone do something about these chickens. Of course, that someone was me! I quickly composed and sent all the chickens and roosters a mental movie of them all stepping away from the building.
Instantly, the chicken squawking stopped. I had a new appreciation for just how easy some of us Kaxians would find it to herd animals. I had the distinct impression that even the huge cows my mom tells me her side of the family herds over in Australia would be no problem, with my mental movies.
The humans continued to make distressed noises for a few more minutes, but finally those, too, died down.
Human hearing leaves much to the human imagination, I guess. My master hadn't even noticed that anything unusual was going on, but his mate and her mother filled him in once we rejoined them at our table.
"Scott! You missed it!"
"What?"
"The chickens all went crazy over something by the men's room door!"
"Yeah! They were squabbling like mad!"
"People started tripping over them."
"And everyone was spilling ice cream..."
"You really missed quite a show!"
Like I said, I was really glad I had practiced this here at the stables, where they thought it was quite a show, and something to laugh about. It was a good thing I hadn't tried this at home, but I planned to do that next.
* * *
My Nique neighbors still ran out through their doggie door just to taunt me, whenever my humans let me out back through the sliding glass door, to do my business.
"Did your mommy let you come out?"
"Be careful, now."
"Don't hurt yourself."
"Cry if you can't find the tree, Punkie."
I was more determined than ever to get even with them, and now I had a new weapon in my arsenal: I would sic my prey animals on those two pesky Niques.
From my chicken experience, I knew I had to include a critter's exit strategy, when I sent it a mental movie. Amusing as the chicken pile-up at the ice cream stand had been, it had also been too much of a spectacle. Sooner rather than later, a spectacle like that would violate our prime command from Kax (and from Nique, but who cares about that?):
No humans can know that dogs are aliens.
So, when I turned my attention to luring prey animals for my selfish purpose of wreaking revenge against my two pesky Nique neighbors, I kept the prey animals' exit strategies in mind.
"What's the worst thing I can do to a couple of Niques without actually harming them?" I was thinking to myself. "I know! I'll mess with their food!" Guys hate it when you mess with their food.
I could smell their two small bowls full of dry dog food inside their house, just past their doggie door. Their humans kept their bowls always full of food, and let the Niques eat as much as they wanted.
"Heh!" I thought, "If the Niques can go in and out the doggie door, so could other vermin."
Reaching out with my mind's eye, I located some very small minds, inside the walls of the Niques' house. They were spread far apart and traveling alarmingly quickly all over the house. I guessed they were searching for food. These minds were not as bored as the chickens' minds had been. They were not pets, not pampered nor protected. Yet, they were not being hunted, merely scavenging. They were receptive. I was starting to be able to tell. I wasn't sure how I knew, but I did know my mental movies would work on these mice.
I composed the mental movie, reminding myself to get them back to their normal activities once they had done my errand. In the movie, they came to the small dishes full of food and took all they wanted, and then went back into the walls and scurried around in there until they got tired, and then they went to sleep. I hoped that was enough to get them back to doing what they normally did autonomously, but I reminded myself to check on the poor little mice later, just in case. And then, I played my mental movie in their little mouse minds.
It worked! The mice ate up the Niques' food that was in their food bowls.
At first, the Niques' humans just refilled the food bowls and didn't think anything of it. I knew when the humans sta
rted to notice the food was disappearing because I could hear them talking about it, clear over there in the house next door.
"Did you feed the dogs this morning?"
"Yeah, I did."
"Well, they don't have any food."
"No way!"
The Niques themselves noticed their food was disappearing, of course, but so long as their humans kept replacing the food, its disappearance wasn't bothering the Niques any. It took a week for the humans to become concerned that their dogs' food kept disappearing so quickly.
"Why in the world am I filling the dogs' food bowls so often?"
"I've been filling them, too!"
"Where can all this food be going?"
I had to keep playing my mental movie for the mice, to make them keep taking the food. I did this at strategic times, so that the humans didn't notice. However, the humans were now putting food in the dishes eight times a day. The mice had trouble eating so much. I could smell the mouse puke all the way over in my house. I didn't want the humans to start smelling it.
I had to bring in more mice.
Finally, I ended up bringing in ants, too. I started a whole colony of ants under the house next door.
About the time the humans next door started getting angry about how the Niques' food was disappearing so quickly, they couldn't help but notice the ants. The infestation was so bad, I kinda sorta heard them shrieking about ants coming out of the shower head. The landlord called an exterminator who came for the ant problem, and he killed off all the mice, while he was at it.
The Niques were supposed to suffer, but the only ones suffering next door were the poor mice I had used for my selfish revenge scheme. And the humans.
"Well, that didn't work out quite the way I wanted it to." I just thought this in my head. I wasn't frustrated enough to be talking to myself out loud or anything. Not me!
* * *
Next, I tried birds. There were lots of pigeons around who I guessed were the pigeons that the former tenants used for their drug smuggling operations. Carrier pigeons. They roosted under the eaves of our house, now that their coops were gone. I didn't have any messages to send, but I thought that was a cool idea I might use some day, if I needed to communicate with my master and he was far away without me.
The next time I was outside doing my business, sure enough, my two pesky Nique neighbors charged out through their doggie door to pester me.
"Ooh! The little momma's boy got out!"
"Can you find the tree by yourself, Punkie?"
Well, the joke was on them, because from all sides they were pelted with pigeon poop! I had all the pigeons drop whatever they had on the noisy Niques, and then return to their roosts.
"Haha! I probably shouldn't laugh at your misfortune, but ha ha ha! It’s so funny!"
I just stood there laughing at them. It felt great!
* * *
Squirrels worked great, too. I got them to pelt the little Niques with pine cones from the trees in their back yard. It got so they were afraid to go out through their little doggie door! I won!
Chapter 19: Vacation
One day, my humans started talking about going on a vacation. The memories told me this meant going far from home, but only for a week or two.
"I want to take Raffle on a camping trip."
My master was talking to his mate.
"Ooh! That sounds fun!"
"Here is a book that describes various camp grounds three or four hours' drive from here. Let's pick one out and plan our trip."
"OK."
Going away from the den is much more complicated for humans than it is for Kaxians or wolves (or Niques, but who cares about them?). My humans called both their employers and arranged for the time off. They called the landlord and arranged to have the grass cut and the fall leaves raked. However, soon it was settled that we would be going away for two weeks.
I would be turning one year old in the middle of our vacation time, and that meant I would be an adult Kaxian, no longer a non-qualified puppy. After that, I would be eligible for promotion, at least age-wise.
The wolf in me loved the trip, including the drive. My humans didn't use the air conditioner, so the truck cab windows were open wide. From my place behind the seats, I could just manage to stick my nose out the passenger door window.
Wow! There were a thousand different scents flowing past my nose each second. In addition to all the scents of the highway: rubber tires, exhaust, hot metal, asphalt... I smelled grasses, trees, bushes, animals, birds, and even insects. Each scent brought its source to my mind for contemplation for a split second, and then it was on to the next scent. The experience was intoxicating. I was perfectly content to just sit there with my nose out the window, smelling this world go by.
The wolf in me loved our campground, too. Summer had gone by, and the cooler days of fall had come, so we had the place almost all to ourselves. Only three of the forty campsites were inhabited. Our site was fairly large, a quarter acre or so, and all we had on it was our little pickup truck and a large tent. The site had its own fire ring and picnic table. There were hills and large pines and live-oak trees all around, so we had privacy. We could not see any of the human inhabitants of the other campsites, although of course I could hear them and smell them.
There was food to be hunted everywhere: birds, rabbits, squirrels, snakes, raccoons, possums...
But, my master and mistress ate stuff out of cans. Humans are weird. I wasn't complaining, though. No way. They let me lick the food off their dishes before they used the suds! I had to admit that canned chili and baked beans tasted good out here.
There was a lake near our campsite, and they let me off the leash to swim. It was the first time I swam, this life. Swimming is something everyone should do every chance they get! It's so much fun, and feels so good, and is so good for you.
Fishing was the most fun activity for my master, and they did eat what he caught. Once I figured out what he was trying to do when he took out that stick with the string on it and threw it out into the water, I sent the fish mental movies in which they bit the worms he stuck on a hook at the end of the string. He started bringing in one fish after another, and his mind turned the brightest pink I ever saw, with excitement. It made me happy to make him so happy, and we enjoyed our days together immensely.
My master was weird about the fish, though. He easily caught fifty fish a day for two weeks, but for some reason, he only wanted to keep ten of them. Ten fish was all he wanted to show for two weeks of hunting fish! Isn't that weird?
He put the first ten fish he caught in a plastic cage that he set in the shallow part of the lake. Whenever he caught a bigger fish, he put it in the cage and threw a smaller fish back into the lake. My humans took the biggest ten fish home in an iced cooler, and they did eat them. I was proud of my human fish hunter.
We did have a lot of fun on the camping trip to the woods. Each evening, my humans would build a fire to heat canned food and roast marshmallows. Sometimes my mistress would sing. They took me on walks around the lake and up into the nearby hills. We explored the land all around the campground.
The wolf in me was having a good old time. He loved this "back to nature" stuff. However, I am only a tiny bit wolf.
Most of me is Kaxian, and I was out of earshot, nose range, and suggestion range of every Kaxian I knew (and every Nique, too, but who cares about them?). The tiny bit of me that is wolf was having a grand old time. The Kaxian me was near panic almost every moment.
I couldn't help but remember the last time I had been so far from everyone. In my head, I knew my new humans would never abandon me. I knew they loved me. However, the heart is cruel. No matter how many times my head told me I had nothing to worry about, my heart kept fearing my beloved humans had brought me here to abandon me.
My fear of abandonment was especially bad at meal time. I simply could not get myself to eat unless I could see that my humans were settled down and not about to leave me. I alway
s ate with my ears tuned to their activity. If they got up while I was eating, then I stopped eating and turned to follow them, wherever they were going. They found this annoying when emptying their bladders!
Heg was right, though. My parents had trained me correctly. I knew what I had to do.
"Kax! Thank you for giving me these two loving and attentive humans. Please help me not be so afraid they'll abandon me. I know I seem ungrateful, in my fear."
I didn't expect an answer.
Imagine my surprise when one came!
I didn't so much hear a voice in my head as see moving pictures, a little like Heg's power and a lot like my power of suggestion at work―and, I now realized, like the memories. This was just like my Kaxian memories that came back to me gradually as I grew up, the way Mom and Dad had told me they would.
Only, the mental movie I saw now was of much larger scope than the pictures Heg showed me or than the mental movies I had shown Randy, my master, Mister's master, the rest of my old Kaxian pack, or any of the prey animals. Somehow, every Kaxian—both on Earth and back on our planet—was in this mental movie. Most importantly, it showed me the very nature of Kax. It showed me that some Kaxians, like me, are meant to hear Kax and to pass on to the others the will of Kax.
Now I knew what I had been training for!
And then the mental movie got even more amazing. It showed me what had been hidden from my puppy self.
This duty of being one of the Earthly voices of Kax was what I had done in every life, and what I would continue to do in all my lives to come. Now, on my birthday, when I was once again an adult, all the memories came back to me. I was myself once again, truly reborn to my Kaxian destiny.
I greatly enjoyed the rest of the vacation after that! My puppy self still feared being abandoned, but now the puppy part of me was as tiny as the wolf part, and I had memories from 98 lives to draw on.
***
This is the end of
Dog Aliens 1: Raffle's Name.
Raffle has found his role on Earth. He is a messenger from Kax to his fellow Kaxians.
Dog Aliens 2: Oreo is now available online in ebook and paperback.
Dog Aliens 3: She Wolf Neya is due out in 2014. Sign up to be notified when it’s available!
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