From the short Christmas tale, Ho Ho Silver,
by Lincoln Rogers
A night snow blurred the view out my window, a million flakes reflecting the illumination of floodlights like shining angels congregating on Earth before the sun calls them back to Heaven the following day. I hated it. Making matters worse was the black and white bundle of energetic dog grunting, squirming, and pawing at the air in the pleasure of scratching his back on the carpet of our living room. Quite unlike yours truly, it didn’t take much to make him happy.
“Silver, cut it out for crying out loud. I’m trying to work here.”
At the sound of my raspy voice, the five year old Springer Spaniel flipped to his stomach, tongue out and brown eyes finding mine with an expression of adoration. You’d think after all this time, he’d figure out I was a complete and hopeless grump. It didn’t look like today would be the day.
“What are you looking at? Why don’t you go do something useful for a change? Go patrol.”
His curly ears perked higher a millisecond before a scramble of legs propelled him out the “doggy door” like a shot from a cannon. There wasn’t a word he liked better than “patrol.” Come fair or foul weather, he loved bounding the perimeter of our acreage. I kept hoping he might someday perform a beneficial chore during one of his runs like chase varmints or show trespassers a flash of teeth, but Silver had different ideas. His version of winter patrol included frolicking with bunnies and creating puppy igloos from various snowdrifts among the rocks.
My eyes rolled in disgust at a six-month old memory of Silver playing tag with brightly colored butterflies instead of chasing off rodents attempting to pilfer my experimental crop of potatoes. That project was a disaster, not yielding a plugged nickel from all my efforts. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how the money-making schemes of a veritable genius like myself always ended up with nothing to show for them. It had to be my confounded neighbors. Every last one of them was jealous of my towering intellect and amazing agricultural talents. The friendly greetings and courteous waves they sent my way each time I saw them didn’t fool me for a second. It’s like my long departed Pappy always used to say, “It’s when you start believing folks mean you no harm that they can take advantage of ya. Don’t trust nobody, Sonny Boy, and they can’t hurt ya none.”
Never mind about them. My latest idea was sure to catch on like wildfire in a Texas oil field. If Silver wouldn’t snare rabbits, then I would. After I caught the ones here, I’d canvas the rest of the county until I had enough of the irritating creatures to start my new enterprise: “Roy’s Rabbits Feet.” I’d peddle them to stores in the city selling Lottery tickets. If all them pavement dwellers wanted to throw away money on million-to-one odds, they’d find “Roy’s Rabbits Feet” hanging nearby. Good luck . . . for a price.
Dreams of riches crowded my brain while I polished the barrel of my shotgun by the dim light of 50 watts and low flames crackling within my fireplace. Distant sounds of jingling bells mixed a few moments with the clinking coins of my vision until their approaching noise brought me back to the reality of my overstuffed, plaid recliner. Wearing his usual grin, Silver and his rapid tail appeared, a set of fluffy reindeer antlers and a collar of sleigh bells keeping time with his --
Reindeer antlers and sleigh bells?! Where in tarnation did those come from? And what low-down snake placed them on the happy mutt sitting at my feet . . .
