“Lizzy!” yelled the boy.
The girl started laughing. Her name must be Lizzy, Stick Dog figured.
“How are we going to get it down?” the boy asked. He didn’t seem mad at all. He thought it was funny too.
“I had no idea how powerful I am!” Lizzy exclaimed, flexed her left bicep, and laughed some more.
“It’s no big deal,” the dad said. “Jacob, climb up on my shoulders. We might be able to reach it.”
Stick Dog couldn’t believe it. They didn’t need a complicated strategy. They didn’t need a perfectly executed plan.
No.
Stick Dog knew this: good timing often worked just as well as a good plan.
“They’re going to be busy here for a while,” he whispered to his friends. “We can go get some food now!”
“What?!” yelled Poo-Poo and Karen.
“Where?!” yelped Mutt and Stripes.
“I think it’s food anyway,” Stick Dog said. “It’s thick and green. It’s in a bowl on the picnic table on the patio. It’s called guacamole. I heard the humans say it earlier.”
“Guac-a-what-eee?” asked Poo-Poo. He and the others had never heard such a strange word before.
“Guac-a-mole-eee,” Stick Dog pronounced slowly and phonetically. He yanked his head sideways toward the patio to try to get them to move. “That way.”
His encouragement didn’t work.
They didn’t move.
“Is it made out of moles?” asked Stripes suspiciously. “If so, I don’t want any. Moles are gross. All that scurrying around and digging and stuff. And their weird pink noses! No thank you.”
“I doubt if it’s made out of moles,” Stick Dog answered quickly. He didn’t want the conversation to veer off into a time-consuming exchange about moles. “It’s green—and moles are not green.”
“Maybe it’s made out of guacs,” suggested Karen.
Stick Dog couldn’t help himself, he had to ask. “What are ‘guacs’? Have you ever heard that word before, Karen?”
“Sure I have,” answered Karen confidently. “It’s a big group of birds.”
“That’s a ‘flock,’” Stick Dog said, but his friends didn’t seem to notice. They were intrigued by Karen’s bird idea.
“So that thick green stuff is made out of birds, hunh?” Mutt asked, and nodded his head. “Might be tasty then. I’ve had chicken and turkey before. You know, on a sandwich or something I’ve found at Picasso Park or on the school playground.”
“It’s not made out of—” Stick Dog said, but he couldn’t complete his thought.
“This new food is green,” Poo-Poo interrupted, joining in. “So it must be made out of green birds. Parrots, finches, pterodactyls, hummingbirds, parakeets. Those kinds of birds. See, I think the humans catch a bunch of those green birds. Maybe they put them in a cage and listen to their beautiful songs for a while. They probably fatten them up by feeding them a bunch of worms and seeds and stuff. And when they get nice and plump, they pop those cute little green birds into a pot and boil them. Then they mash them all up into this guacamole dish. It’s all perfectly clear now.”
Stripes, Mutt, and Karen all seemed to think that Poo-Poo made a lot of sense.
Stick Dog took a moment to himself then. He lowered his head, closed his eyes, and tried to think of calm, soothing things. He thought of the way the leaves in the trees rustle when there’s a gentle autumn breeze. He thought of the slow-moving water in the creek as it sloshes and babbles along.
After this brief meditation, Stick Dog raised his head and calmly said, “I’m certain it’s not made out of green birds. I don’t know what it is actually made of, but I can tell you something for sure.”
Mutt asked, “What’s that, Stick Dog?”
“I saw the big male human dip his finger into that bowl on the picnic table. The one with the silver paper on top,” Stick Dog replied. “That’s the one the guacamole is in. When he pulled his finger out, he licked the green guacamole off. It looked like he really enjoyed the way it tasted!”
Well, that’s all Stripes, Mutt, Karen, and Poo-Poo needed to hear. Poo-Poo asked the question that was on all their minds.
He asked, “How do we get it?”
“What do you mean?” replied Stick Dog.
Poo-Poo asked, “What’s the plan?”
“There’s no plan,” Stick Dog said. He was a little dumbfounded, but he decided to simply state the obvious. “The humans are all that way. And the guacamole is over this way. We just, you know, go get it.”
With that good news, Poo-Poo, Mutt, Stripes, and Karen happily followed Stick Dog as he scampered toward the patio. As he did, Stick Dog’s confidence grew. That’s because he could hear the four humans talking from the side yard. As long as he could hear them, he was fairly sure he could deduce if they were coming back. He stopped about halfway across the yard to listen to their conversation. The others stopped with him.
“Nope. Can’t reach it from here,” the dad said. “Lizzy, hand a racket up to Jake. Maybe we can reach it that way. Mom, you make sure he doesn’t fall off.”
Stick Dog turned to his friends and smiled. “We’ve got some time.”
They hustled the rest of the way to the patio. When they got there, Stick Dog eyed that bowl of guacamole on the picnic table.
He took one step toward it.
He reached toward it.
And then stopped.
They weren’t going to get that guacamole.
Not yet.