1
I am a dog, and my name is Lily. I have a girl, and her name is Maggie Rose.
Today Maggie Rose put me on a leash. That meant I was going someplace exciting!
I trotted on my leash beside Maggie Rose. Craig walked with us. He is Maggie Rose’s much older brother, and from where I stand, he looks very tall. Maggie Rose has another brother named Bryan, but he is not as tall, and he was not walking with us today.
My job when I am walking with Maggie Rose is to look for things that she might not notice, such as a squirrel who needs to be chased, or bushes where dogs have lifted their legs.
“Know what kind of ice cream cone you want, Maggie Rose?” Craig asked while I was busy sniffing one of those bushes.
“Strawberry, because it’s pink. Pink’s my favorite color,” Maggie replied.
“I thought you liked vanilla ice cream with sprinkles on it,” Craig objected.
Maggie Rose frowned. “That was last year, when I was in second grade. I’m a third-grader now, so I like strawberry.”
Craig nodded. “Makes sense.”
A car drove past us on the street. A dog had his head out the window, and he barked at me. I knew what he was trying to tell me: “I’m in the car and you’re not! I’m in the car and you’re not!”
He kept barking until the car turned a corner. Some dogs are like that. They start barking and then they just don’t stop, even if they have forgotten why they were barking in the first place. I am a well-behaved dog, and I do not do such things.
We walked a little more, and then Craig went inside a building while I stayed outside with Maggie Rose. In a little while, Craig was back. He was carrying an ice cream cone in each hand, which I thought was a wonderful thing to do!
They sat at a table, and I did Sit. I am extremely good at Sit. I was sure that when Maggie Rose noticed what an incredible Sit I was doing, I would get some of that ice cream. Nothing else would even make sense.
But then a loud, deep voice startled us all. “Go away!” a man shouted.
We all jumped. I looked over my shoulder. There was a parking lot behind us, and a man was standing at the edge of it, looking angrily into a little stretch of trees and bushes. “Go away!” he shouted again.
“Whoa,” Craig said. “It’s Mr. Swanson! You know, he lives two houses down.” He raised his voice a little. “What’s going on, Mr. Swanson?”
Mr. Swanson turned around to look at us. He walked up to our table and pointed one thumb over his shoulder. “Hi, kids. See the fox?”
Craig shook his head. “What fox?” said Maggie Rose.
Mr. Swanson pointed into the trees. “There. Right there. See it?”
We all looked into the woods. I lifted my nose, and I caught a scent that was new to me. It was like a male dog, but different—wilder and more fierce. I pulled on my leash a little, so that Maggie Rose would let me go and meet this new animal. We could play together!
I am very good at playing with other animals. I often go to a place called Work and play with all the animals there. Work is where Mom spends most of her time helping animals. She calls Work “the rescue.”
Maggie Rose twitched. “I see it! Lily, do you see it? See the fox?”
That was a new word to me—“fox.” It must be the name of the animal.
The fox was crouched behind a bush, so I could only catch a glimpse of short fur and bright eyes and ears that stood up in stiff triangles. He stared at us hard.
“He’s here for the eggs,” Mr. Swanson said.
“What eggs?” Maggie Rose asked.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
Mr. Swanson took us toward a big wooden box in the middle of the parking lot. It had some bushes and flowers growing inside it.
“A goose laid some eggs right in this planter,” Mr. Swanson said. “But a couple of days ago, some men were here fixing potholes in the parking lot, and I guess the noise scared her. She flew away and never came back.”
“Oh no,” said Maggie Rose.
When we reached the wooden box, Maggie Rose looked into it. She gasped.
Craig peered over her shoulder. “Whoa, look at that!”
“Well, now,” Mr. Swanson said. “That’s remarkable!”
I put my front feet on the edge of the wooden box so that I could see inside. There was something moving in there!
Actually, there were a lot of somethings. They were small and fuzzy, like the kittens I play with at Work sometimes. But they also had beaks, like my friend Casey the crow. (Casey spent some time at Work because Mom needed to help his wing, so we got to know each other really well.) They huddled together in a group making tiny peeping noises. Broken eggshells were all around them.
“The eggs hatched!” exclaimed Maggie Rose. “They’re so cute!”
“They’re cute, all right,” Craig said. He didn’t sound as happy as Maggie Rose did. “But where’s their mom?”
“Hasn’t been back since she flew off,” Mr. Swanson said, shaking his head.
“Let’s put Lily in the planter with the baby geese,” Maggie Rose suggested. “She will protect them from the fox.”
At the word “fox” I turned to smell for the animal in the woods, but it had run off without even trying to be friends. I thought that was very unfriendly. Life would be better if all animals acted more like dogs.
Maggie Rose picked me up. “They must be scared without their mom.”
“They’re going to be even more scared if a dog’s in there with them,” Mr. Swanson warned her.
“Actually, my sister might be right,” Craig answered.
“Lily helps out at the rescue all the time,” Maggie Rose explained to Mr. Swanson. “She plays with all the animals.”
“If you say so,” Mr. Swanson replied doubtfully.
Maggie Rose put me inside the big wooden box. “Be nice to the baby geese, Lily,” she told me.
Copyright © 2020 by W. Bruce Cameron
Illustrations © 2020 by Jennifer L. Meyer
