Саманта Сильвер: A Grizzly Discovery

“It’s all good and fine to know who did it, but how are we going to prove it?” Sophie asked. I shrugged.

“I don’t know yet. I kind of figured I’d try and see who did it first, and then figure out the whole evidence thing later.”

“Fair enough,” Sophie said, as the bell above the front door jingled. Sophie went out to greet Chew-Barka—his owner was a big Star Wars fan—and I got the final preparations ready for his spaying. Chew-Barka was a four-month-old collie mix, with shaggy brown fur that matched his namesake completely. I knew him from when he got his puppy shots here, but when he came through with Sophie, he wasn’t his usual, energetic self.

“Hey little guy, what’s wrong?” I asked him, picking him up and putting him on the exam table, taking out my stethoscope as I did my regular pre-surgery examination.

“You’re going to butcher me. You’re going to turn me into a uterus.”

“Do you mean a eunuch?”

“Maybe. I’m a young dog! I’m in my prime! I should be out exploring, getting bitches.” I bit my lip to keep from laughing as Chew-Barka continued. “Instead I’m going to be living like an old dog. I won’t even want to hump my favorite blankie anymore.”

“Do you know what a condom is, Chewie?” I asked him.

“No.”

“Well, humans use it when they have sex, it covers up the naughty bits. That way, the girl doesn’t get pregnant. Unfortunately, no one’s invented condoms for dogs yet, so you have to have your balls remove to stop yourself from getting female dogs pregnant.”

“So?”

“So, if you get a female dog pregnant, that contributes to the pet overpopulation. It’s a lot more responsible to get neutered. Neutering also won’t necessarily make all of your urges go away. You can still go out and get bitches , you just won’t be able to get them pregnant.” Ok, so that part was a bit of a lie. Almost all dogs lost most of their urges when they were neutered. Still, maybe Chewie would be the exception.

“All the other dogs are going to make fun of me.”

“Almost all the dogs in Willow Bay are neutered,” I replied. “And I would know. I did most of them myself. Sophie, the lady who brought you in here, she has a dog and he’s neutered,” I told Chewie, trying to calm him down. He lay down and put his face between his paws. “I know it’s scary. I know you’re not sure about this. But I promise you, it’s for the best.”

“But my balls!”

“I know,” I told him, stroking his fur softly.

“I’ve only had them for a few months, but I’ve become pretty attached to them.”

“You won’t miss them, I promise.”

“I’ll have to find some other part of my body to lick.” I did my best to hide the smile forming on my lips. Poor Chewie was really devastated about this.

“Listen, we have to go get you ready for the surgery, ok? I’ll be giving you anesthetic, so you’ll be asleep for the whole procedure. You won’t feel a thing.”

“I won’t feel anything anymore, ever. I’m going to be numb always after this. I’ll never love again!”

Goodness. Even Bee hadn’t been this dramatic before being spayed. “It’ll be ok, Chewie. I promise.”

A few minutes later Sophie came in and helped me put Chewie under, and I began the surgery. Ten minutes later, we were finished. Sophie and I hung around and waited while Chewie came out from under the anesthetic, then held him for another hour to be sure he didn’t have any lasting side effects. He was extremely drowsy, and just sat in the kennel staring at the wall the whole time, and finally his owner came and picked him up and Sophie and I loaded up the new kittens and took them home, Bee insisting that she ride in the box with them on the car ride back to our place.

My dramatic little cat had become a mom to someone else’s litter of kittens.

Jason and Taylor both came over to have pizza with the three of us when we got home. I asked Bee where she wanted to be with her kittens, and she told me she wanted me to lock her in my bathroom, where the dog “couldn’t have any influence over my charges”. I did as she asked, then made my way back to the kitchen and got the plates ready for everyone else to arrive.

Fifteen minutes later, when Charlotte finally made it through the door, we were all here and ready.

“Oh man,” Taylor said, sinking into the couch with his plate of pizza and a beer. “After this week, I totally deserve this.”

“Hectic times?” Jason asked, lifting his own beer to Taylor.

“Yeah. It’s the full moon, and we all know what that means.”

“All the crazies come out to play,” Charlotte replied with a grin. “Trust me, I know too.”

“What about the full moon and crazies?” Sophie asked, looking around.

“It’s a myth/superstation/legend/whatever you want to call it among people who work in industries where you care for other people. So medical professionals, cops, social workers, that sort of thing,” Charlotte explained. “People who work in hospitality see it too sometimes. Basically, whenever there’s a full moon, everything gets to be a little bit more insane than usual.”

“It sounds like the sort of thing that’s not real and we all make up, but I swear it’s true,” Taylor said. “The first night of the full moon was the night before that man was killed by a bear.”

“I think you mean murdered,” I corrected. Taylor looked like he was going to argue with me, but one look from Sophie and he decided against it.

“Well regardless, it was the night before that man was killed. Then the next night we found old Wallace Tomlinson drunk in a dried up creekbed. He told us he was going sailing to Hawaii to go on holidays.”

“We had one of the regular schizophrenics come into the hospital,” Charlotte added. “He’d gone off his medication and was screaming at the nurses in the ER that the CIA was coming to kill him. They eventually got him sedated, but it took three big male nurses and two doctors to do it. Security looked like they wanted to put the hospital in lockdown.”

Taylor grinned at Charlotte. “Yeah, you know what it’s like. Animals are nothing compared to people.”

“Please,” I snorted. “Today I had to explain to a dog called Chew-Barka why he needed to be neutered.”

“It’s easy to explain things to animals when they can’t reply to you or understand what you’re saying. Besides, I had to stop a mob of crazy townspeople trying to get more gossip than their neighbors from breaking down an inn door to look at a body yesterday,” Taylor replied.

“Fine, I guess that’s a bit harder,” I replied with a smile. Taylor obviously wasn’t privy to my witchy abilities. “But the full moon is gone now, right?”

Charlotte nodded. “Yes. Until next month, anyway.”

“Well, even if it’s just a few weeks of peace, I’ll take it,” Taylor said. “We have absolutely zero leads on the death of that guy. All we know is his name is Jack Lundgren, and while he has a California driver’s license on him, it turned out it was fake. So we don’t even know where he’s from. We don’t even know if that’s his real name. His prints haven’t popped in the system.”

At this point, I was barely paying any attention to anything anymore. I let my eyes stare off into the distance as I begun to think. I had a hunch. Yes, it was no more than a hunch, but maybe, just maybe…

“Yo, earth to Angie!” Sophie said, waving her hand in my face.

“What? Sorry, what?” I asked, shaking my head quickly. “No. I don’t have time. I gotta go.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Jason asked, standing up.

“I have to… ask a question,” I replied, throwing on a jacket and grabbing my purse and heading out.