April Fool's from Trixie!
By Trixie Koontz, Dog
Last year this was, one minute past midnight, I wake Dad with urgent bark. Pee. Have to pee. Quick, quick, quick. Pee soon, pee now, pee right away! Dad is confused. More than usual, I mean. Trixie (which is me) is well trained and usually pees only four times a day and only on command: first thing after breakfast, on 11:00 walk, on dinner walk, and in evening before bed. Trixie (which is still me) has never before woke Dad to pee. Trixie can go twelve hours without peeing if necessary. Trixie has fantastic bladder control. Will never need Depends. Bladder can swell big as basketball, and Trixie just smiles...sloshes while walking, and smiles. Trixie has never exploded. Trixie never will. But now at 12:01, Trixie is in need-to-pee frenzy.
[Trixie (which is me) doesn't know why she keeps referring to herself as Trixie while writing this, and now in the third person, too. She (which is me) is still new at this stupid writing thing. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Semicolons make Trixie nervous; dangling participles make her growl; and sometimes she (which is me!) gets all bollixed up over pronouns. Trixie was not born to be writer. Trixie was born to eat. And to be adored.]
Pee, pee, pee. It is now 12:01 in the morning, Dad is putting on shoes, and I (which is Trixie) am in hey-look-how-bad-I-need-to-pee frenzy. At 12:02, Dad trips over untied shoe laces, falls on bedroom floor. Is very amusing. At 12:02:25, sleepy Dad walks into closed bedroom door. Is so funny I might cough up dead bird if I was bad dog and ate things I shouldn't. At 12:02:45, sleepy Dad stumbles and falls down stairs. Is more hilarious than Scooby Doo. Outside, in moonlight, Dad says "Trixie, hurry," which is my command to pee, but I (me, which is Trixie) go to the bush where earlier I hid page from day-date calendar under stone. Bring page to Dad. Page says "April 1." Ha-ha-ha. April Fool. Ha-ha-ha. Don't need to pee. Ha-ha-ha. Only Trixie laughs. Dad has little sense of humor between midnight and dawn. Humans. They are moody, but you've got to love 'em.
At 3:10 in morning, Dad is sleeping again. I wake him with bark and, through elaborate series of facial expressions, ear twitches, tail wags, whines, burps, and paw gestures, explain to him that alien spacecraft is hovering over house and small gray ETs are eating potato chips and cheese puffs in kitchen. Dad says, "You can't fool me twice, Tricky." I consider waking Mom, but she needs her sleep because I have seen shopping list for tomorrow and know she is going to Three Dog Bakery to buy tasty treats and maybe tug toy. Good Mom. Good. Good Mom.
At 3:23, half a dozen four-foot-tall gray aliens, reeking of Cheese Doodles, enter bedroom. Because they are advanced species and know that dogs are the true secret masters of the universe, these ETs salute me. We chat telepathically for a few minutes in language of Pan-Galactic Federation, mostly about price of cantaloupes in the Andromeda solar system and sad state of television in their arm of Milky Way Galaxy, where stupid "reality" shows, like here, clog the airwaves. "Who Wants to Marry an Ocotopoidal Billionaire?" and "How Many of Your Own Body Parts Can You Eat and Still Survive?" are huge. After we chat, they levitate sleeping Dad and float him out of bedroom, downstairs, through kitchen, to backyard.
Because I pause in kitchen to eat dropped chips and Doodles, I almost miss being beamed up to ship with Dad. Is nice spaceship. Decorated by expensive Beverly Hills interior designer. ETs are proud of $2,000-per-yard hand-sculpted wool carpet, Empire Period French antiques, and black-lacquered chinnoiserie proctological-exam table. Keeping Dad asleep, they measure, photograph, and take plaster impressions of his teeth for their Supreme Ruler, Glorgg, who preens over the most valuable collection of human dental models in galaxy. For their own amusement, they study his nostrils. Then, of course, the proctological examination. For this, Dad is awake but drugged and delirious. He says to me, "Lassie, go tell the sheriff that Timmy's in big trouble on the alien spaceship."
Later, after Dad is pulled inside out by his tongue and the ETs examine his insides for Evil Slugs from Saturn (he is not infected, though he has a weird paisley spleen), he is levitated back to bedroom and tucked in for rest of night. ETs leave lovely complementary terry-cloth robe embroidered with name of their spaceship: XXSPLNORG.
Dawn draws near. From hiding place Trixie (me) quick extracts fake pile of rubber dog poop purchased by computer from Internet novelty shop. Place rubber poop on bathroom floor and wait. Waking from dreams of unthinkable violation, Dad goes to bathroom, steps in fake poop, slips, falls through window, crashes into flower bed on top of creeping cat. Cat is not amused. I am. Ha-ha-ha. Funny. Funnier even than Katie Couric interviewing Cher about fine points of United States foreign policy.
Dad has new novel. Title is THE FACE. It is fast-moving suspense with supernatural twist, set in privileged world of a movie star with legendary Bel Air estate—scary but fun. The Face has nothing to do with April Fool's Day, but Trixie (I, me, secret master of the universe) need to score points with Dad after the rubber poop trick.
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