I went inside the barn to help with the puppies. The volunteers were nearly finished with the task of sorting out which puppies belonged to which of the eight adult female golden retrievers so they could be transported and then fostered in family groups.
“Most of these puppies look a little young to be separated from their mothers,” Clarence was explaining. “So initially we really need eight families willing to take in a mother and her whole litter.”
“Is it really that much of a disaster to separate the puppies earlier?” one of the volunteers asked.
Those of us who knew how strongly Clarence felt about this subject groaned inwardly. For the next fifteen minutes or so, as we sorted puppies and loaded them into the crates with their mothers, Clarence gave us chapter and verse on the behavioral issues that could arise from too-early separation from the mother dog, and I amused myself by trying to figure out whether this could account for the behavioral problems of some of my less-than-favorite humans.
At the other end of the barn, Grandfather and two Brigade volunteers were sitting in folding camp chairs watching the tiger. The chimps—two of them—and the four smaller monkeys were sulking in large nearby cages. The finches and the hunting dogs were long gone. But the tiger was still pacing restlessly up and down its tiny cage.
“He’ll be a lot happier with all the space he’ll have out at the zoo,” one of the volunteers said.
“Are you planning on packing him up and taking him there anytime soon?” I asked as I strolled over to join them.
“We’re waiting for the tranquilizer darts to take effect,” Grandfather replied.
I looked more closely. Yes, protruding from the tiger’s hip was a little glass and metal projectile with a festive pink and yellow tip. Another dart lay on the floor of the chain-link cage.
“I still think we should have fed him the tranquilizers,” one of the Brigade volunteers said. “Knead it into a couple of pounds of ground sirloin—he wouldn’t know what hit him.”
“The darts are usually faster,” Grandfather said. “Assuming you hit your target properly.”
The other volunteer winced. I deduced that he had been the dart shooter.
“I don’t think the first one even broke the skin,” the first volunteer said.
“We can’t be sure,” the second volunteer said. “It’s a pity he chose that moment to pee all over everything, so we can’t tell how much of the tranquilizer’s contents went into him and how much dribbled down on the straw.”
Grandfather growled in frustration. The tiger, alerted to the nearby presence of a fellow predator, narrowed his eyes and laid back his ears.
“We need to give it a little more time,” Grandfather said. “In case the dart did hit him and he’s just a slow reactor.”
“Look, he stumbled!” The second volunteer was pointing at the tiger. “That’s a good sign, right?”
“Meg?” Randall stuck his head into the barn. “Chief’s looking for you.”
I left Grandfather and the volunteers to their tiger watch.
I saw the chief standing on the front steps of the farmhouse, taking deep breaths. Was he only recovering from the stench, or was he also counting to ten, or even twenty, as I knew he did when struggling to keep his temper.
I strolled over to him.
“Any idea how soon we can transport Mrs. Frost?” I asked. “The volunteers are nearly finished with the animals in the barn and they’d like to get started on the cats.”
“Soon,” he said. “Ms. Flugleman is helping her finish up her packing. I broke the news to her and got confirmation of Mr. Willimer’s identity.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
“I may ask your father to see if he can get Dr. Kelleher in to see her,” the chief added.
“The shrink? You think she took it that badly?”
“No.” He shook his head slowly. “Well, yes and no. One minute she’s weeping and wailing over her dear Johnny, and the next minute she’s cooing over a cat, and then the cat knocks over a vase and she tells Ms. Flugleman not to worry, Johnny will clean up the pieces. So we break the news to her again and she’s inconsolable again. She could have cognitive issues.”
“Could have?” I echoed. “One look at that house—or one whiff—and you know she has cognitive issues.”
“Good point.” He glanced back at the house and shuddered slightly. “I hope we can find some other family members—she certainly isn’t capable of taking care of herself out here. She couldn’t even get out of the house in an emergency—there are steps at both the front and back doors. They’ve been here nearly a year—you’d think Willimer could have found the time to build her a ramp.”
“Maybe there wasn’t anything she wanted to come outside for,” I said.
The chief nodded as his eyes swept the landscape. The snow made the weathered buildings prettier, but it did nothing to hide how isolated the run-down farmstead was.
“I’ll ask her about family later,” the chief said. “I’ll have to come by the Inn to interview her again. Every time I tried to ask her what, if anything, she remembers about last night, the waterworks started up. So are you the one taking her and Ms. Flugleman back to town?”
“I want to be there to ease her arrival at the Inn,” I said. “Aha—they’re backing the big truck up to the barn. They must be ready to move the tiger.”
The biggest Shiffley moving truck was carefully backing up to the barn door, with the largest of the cages in its huge freight compartment.
“Move the tiger?” The chief sounded alarmed. “Just how are they going to do that?”
“They shot him with a couple of tranquilizer darts a while back,” I explained. “Grandfather must have decided he was finally completely unconscious.”
The chief didn’t seem to find that entirely reassuring. He set off toward the barn at a quick pace. I trailed along after him.
We reached the barn door and peered in. The door to the tiger’s chain-link pen was open. Clarence was sitting by the tiger, listening to its chest with a stethoscope. Grandfather was directing the seven or eight volunteers who were laying out a giant canvas stretcher beside the tiger. The stretcher arranging wasn’t going all that smoothly, in part because most of the volunteers couldn’t tear their eyes off the tiger and kept tripping over the stretcher and each other.
I could understand. I didn’t want to take my eyes off him, and I wasn’t in the cage with him.
“That’s got it,” Grandfather said at last. “Now line up on the other side and put your backs into it.”
The volunteers obediently lined up and began trying to roll the sleeping tiger onto the stretcher. At first their combined efforts seemed to do nothing. Perhaps they were afraid if they pushed too hard they’d wake him. Or perhaps they didn’t realize at first how hard it would be to move the dead weight of an unconscious animal. But then gradually his body began to move, little by little, until they had him on the stretcher.
“Okay—grab that stretcher!” Grandfather called. All eight of them grabbed one or another of the stretcher poles and heaved the sleeping beast into the air. Then they made their slow way to the truck. As he rolled, the dart stuck in his flank came into view, and Clarence carefully plucked it out.
“Just slide the stretcher in,” Grandfather said. “No need to take him off the stretcher. If he’s still unconscious when we reach the zoo, we can carry him off on it, and if he wakes up, he’ll bounce out under his own steam once we open the door.”
The volunteers set down the stretcher and scampered very briskly out of the cage. Clarence and Grandfather swung the cage door closed, and they both double-checked to make sure the locks were closed tight.
When they finished, Grandfather pulled out his cell phone, looked at it, and frowned.
“Damn,” he said. “Still no word from Ruiz.”
“Your Fish and Wildlife contact?” I asked.
“Yes. Well, he does spend a lot of time undercover. He’ll call when he can. Let’s get this big boy out to the zoo.” He went to climb into Clarence’s van.
“Can you take charge of the rescue while I’m gone?” Clarence asked Randall.
“No problem.” Randall grinned. “It’s only the cats left now, and ever since they elected me mayor I’ve become an expert cat herder.”
“When we get the tiger settled, I’ll call to see if you’re still rounding up all his smaller cousins or if I should just meet them over at Meg and Michael’s barn.”
Randall nodded, and waved as first the van and then the truck carrying the tiger rumbled slowly across the farmyard and headed for the lane.
“Meg!”
I turned to find Meredith standing in the doorway.