That time Mister Mosely ripped up the Pink Panther was pretty weird, but it isn’t the weirdest story about Mister Mosely. That happened one morning when I found him next door in Mr Taylor’s yard.
That was the first weird thing, because Mister Mosely never went next door even though there’s this big hole in the fence where a couple of palings are broken off. He was acting kind of weird too. He was just wandering around near the old shed in Mr Taylor’s backyard like he couldn’t make up his mind where to go.
I was up on our back porch when I saw him, so I called out to him. That’s when it got even weirder. Moe started to come home, but something really strange happened when he got about halfway across Mr Taylor’s yard. All of a sudden he just sort of stopped dead and jerked back round and wouldn’t come any further. I thought maybe he heard a noise behind him or something, but he just stood there whining for a bit and then he went back to the shed.
I knew something was wrong with him, because Moe always came when I called him. So I tried again, but the exact same thing happened. He got halfway across the yard and wouldn’t come any further. Even when I clapped my hands and shouted at him it didn’t make any difference. There was something in the middle of the yard that was stopping him, like an invisible wall or one of those force fields they have in Star Trek. I kept calling and calling him but he did the same thing every time.
Then Dad came out to see what ‘all the racket’ was about. When I told him what was happening, he did his really loud whistle thing that I wish I could do and he shouted out to Mister Mosely in his serious, ‘I’m not mucking around’ voice.
But the same thing happened for Dad that happened for me. Except this time when Moe started to come home he was going a bit slower and his head was hanging way down near the grass. When he got to that same spot his head just twisted slowly around and he stayed there making that whiny kind of noise he makes when something is really upsetting him.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
That’s what my dad said. I just shook my head because I didn’t have a clue. Dad said we’d better go and ‘check him out’, and that’s what we did. Dad climbed over the fence first then he lifted me over. I knew something was definitely wrong when we got into Mr Taylor’s yard because I really thought Mister Mosely would come running over to meet us but he didn’t. All he did was wag his tail a bit and stay where he was. I just kept thinking, what’s going on?
It was Dad who saw it first. I only saw it when I got right up close to where Moe was standing. There was something like string coming out of his mouth. Only it wasn’t string, it was fishing line, and it went from out the side of Moe’s mouth right across the yard and into Mr Taylor’s shed. We couldn’t see it at all from back in our yard because it was so thin and clear.
Dad told me to hold Mister Mosely to quieten him down and keep him still. Then he got Mister Mosely by the head so he could open up his mouth. Old Moe wasn’t too happy about that. He was watching Dad and breathing really fast and whining at him. You could tell he was scared, but he let Dad open his mouth anyway.
That’s when we saw the big fish hook. It was stuck right in the side of Mister Mosely’s gum. Dad told me to go and see where the other end of the fishing line went. I was pretty happy to do that, because looking at the fish hook in Moe’s gum made me feel a bit sick in the stomach.
I went into the shed and found that the other end of the line was on a fishing rod which was lying on the floor. It was caught in the doorway. What Dad and me worked out was that the hook probably had some old bait still on it, because Mister Taylor was retired and he went fishing all the time. Moe must have smelt the bait and tried to eat it and got himself hooked just like a fish would. Then when he tried to come back home he must have pulled the fishing rod over and it got stuck in the doorway. And that’s why Mister Mosely always stopped halfway across the yard, because the fishing line was pulling tight on the reel and yanking the hook even deeper into his gum.
‘Poor old fella,’ Dad said.
Mister Mosely looked up at both of us. His big dark eyes were jumping around everywhere and he was making a really high whiny sound. It was the same sound he made whenever he did something wrong. The spot under his eye really could have been a big black tear that day. All I could think of was how many times I called poor Moe to come home, and how he kept trying to come even though he knew it was going to hurt him every time. I felt really bad when I thought about that.
Anyway, what happened then was, Dad said that the hook was in too deep for him to get out, so he cut the fishing line with his pocketknife and we drove Mister Mosely to the vet. Like I said, it was one of the weirdest days ever.
But it wasn’t over yet.