The Old Meadow by George Selden Page B

Robin’s excellent directions—but you’ve got to admit, birds have it easy—I found myself lost.”
    â€œIt’s a wonder you found yourself in Connecticut at all!” said John.
    â€œI almost wasn’t,” said Walt. “I got to a part of town where there were no houses. So, logically, I decided that I’d taken a wrong road somewhere. I turned right around—my stomach scales were pretty sore by now—and inched my way back toward the lights of Hedley. And here I’ll omit certain incidents. Like the driver of that big Mack truck who tried to run over me three times. And the old lady tending her garden at twilight. How nice, I thought. But she caught a glimpse of me—that lady has problems! —and started screaming, ‘Snake! Snake! Snake!’—and went after me with a shovel, as if her last dahlia depended on it. You’d have thought I was King Cobra. Why do the humans hate us so much. Oh, well—”
    Walt took another deep dip. “I will not go into all those ordeals, because when I was about to give up and try to become a garter snake—in somebody’s garden! since I thought I’d never get home again—I heard a sound that lifted my heart.”
    â€œMusic?” asked Chester.
    â€œNo. Yowling dogs. I knew I must be near the pound. And I even thought I could pick out the potbellied bellowing of our dearest Dubber Dog. My buddy!”
    â€œBut it wasn’t me,” Dubber explained. “I’d fallen asleep from hopelessness. It was a Saint Bernard named Siegfried.”
    â€œBut it was dogs! ” Walter declared. “And lots of ’em—all cooped up. It had to be the pound. I made for the noise—” Walt flashed under water, flashed up in the air, and flashed all over the calm pool’s surface.
    Drops of silver, which the moon reached to touch, fell on top of everyone. No one cared. Not even dry Donald Dragonfly, who’d added himself to the gathering, too. “It’s different,” he murmured to himself, as he shook his wings. “It’s annoying—but it may be a blessing, too. I like drops of water.”
    Walter’s head puzzled this way and that. “But this is what’s weird. They could have been expecting me, the dogcatchers. There could have been a sign outside saying, Welcome Walter Water Snake! The door was wide open!”
    â€œOf course it was,” said Chester. “It’s a summer night—they left the door open to get some air.”
    â€œOh. Yes. Well—that fits. You’re logical, Chester C. Anyway, without the use of fangs as yet, I slipperyed right in—and what did I see?”
    â€œI know.” Robert Rabbit’s sympathizing voice sank low.
    So did Donald’s soft buzz. “Rows and rows of puppies in cages!”
    â€œNot exactly,” said Walt. “The dogcatchers were watching television! I slipped silently past them—three of them—and they were all so fascinated by who killed whom, and with what, that not a one of them saw a scale.”
    â€œBut I did, Walt!” Dubber Dog’s pride bubbled in his voice. “I saw you right away.”
    â€œSure you did!” said Walt. “The gunshots on the TV woke you up.”
    â€œI would’ve woken up anyhow.”
    â€œI saw the cages—D.D. was on the lowest shelf—and I saw him! I saw the bolt, and I knew that I could nose it out, ease it out, if only I could get the chance. But then I also saw, to my sorrow, that the barking of those mutts—”
    â€œI don’t much like that word,” rumbled Dubber.
    â€œI also saw that my snake’s presence in the pound had caused those lovable canine creatures to howl even louder—and the three dogcatchers, distracted from Murder in Manhattan, had begun to wonder what was up. I knew this moment was do or dry up. I coiled myself—and I don’t like to