LuLu's Desperate House Dogs (formerly the Bow Wow Blog)

LuLu's Desperate House Dogs is a blog about an eccentric little Beagle named LuLu, who, along with her sister Sadie (a Whippet/Terrier/Beagle blend), writes the lurid Puppies in Lust series, and absorbs local color in an idyllic, off-the-leash, canine-centered village known as Lincoln Park~

Wednesday, February 15, 2006


"Hi, Morey here. My column about Lincoln Park after dark, will be back on Wednesday."~ Posted by Picasa

posted by LuLu @ 10:10 PM 

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah, well, hello there. My name is Morey and I am a mutt. Yep. A Heinz 57, a genuine cross between a bull-bitch and a snow shovel, as they say. My former owner, when he was sober enough to focus, referred to me as a 'mixed breed' -- but I'm not the least bit pretentious. I was born under a bridge, and as soon as my mother was able to stand on her own four legs and shake herself off, she abandoned me. I'm not sure how I survived; I guess I'm just one tenacious SOB.

At any rate, three days ago my current owner, Leander Maserati, and I moved into our posh new digs in Lincoln Park, a decidedly upscale neighborhood in the rust-belt city where we live. The first friendly canine I met turned out to be a hot-looking Beagle who asked me if I'd like to write a column about the area for her blog. I was kind of surprised. "I'm not one of your snooty purebreds," I told her.

"Can you paw a complete sentence?" she asked me.

"Well, yeah," I admitted, and thanks to my former owner, an alcoholic ex-professor who was denied tenure right about the time his wife ran out on him, that much is true. The Prof, you see, found me starving in an alley when I was just a few weeks old and kept me until the DTs (in his case, warring isosceles triangles) did him in one cold winter night. We were together for about a year, and I learned a lot of stuff about math, history, sentence structure, and the frailty of all things female from him.

"Great," said the Beagle, whose name turned out to be LuLu. "By the way, I'm available. By that, I mean I have boyfriends, but I'm not leash tangled to anyone, if you get the picture."

And since she was lying on her back with her legs spread, it was pretty hard not to get it.

"This will have to be a column about Lincoln Park after dark," I told her, as she girlishly pawed at my nose. "My owner, uhm, works nights."

She seemed agreeable, and I was relieved I didn't have to make up a story about Leander. I certainly didn't want to queer the deal by telling her the truth and scaring her off.

Leander, you see, is a werewolf.

As you might expect, he didn't start out as one. Before he became a werewolf, Leander (whose given name is Morey) was a politician. To be specific, he took over his mother's seat on the Columbus, Ohio, city council after she got whacked by a bus. Being what he was -- namely a guy over thirty and under fifty who looked like an overfed, asthmatic pug; a man who had never had a serious relationship, who had always lived with his mother, and who liked to peep in his neighbors' windows in hopes of satisfying his more prurient desires -- Morey/Leander felt that winning the council seat made his whole life seem worthwhile. It was both vindication and reward. When he lost that seat in the very next election, his dreams of one day being governor of Ohio went straight down the toilet. He toyed with the idea of suicide, but wasn't sure how to do it, and before he could hit upon a coherent plan, his life began to look up again.

Thanks to his late mother's collection of 45-rpm records, Morey/Leander was able to identify Patti Page as the vocal artist who recorded a song called 'How Much Is That Doggy In The Window' back in the 1950s. For his efforts, he won an all-paid, week's dream vacation in the beautiful Carpethian Mountains of Transylvania.

Now Morey/Leander had never been outside of Ohio, save for a quick trip to Indianapolis to attend his paternal grandmother's funeral when he was twenty-seven, so I guess it stands to reason that he got roaring drunk his first night in Transylvania (which he initially expected to be Pennsylvania), wandered away from the tour group, and got attacked by a wolf. When he came to his senses in the middle of the street early the next morning, he considered himself lucky to be alive. He limped back to his hotel, bandaged the nasty bite on his hand, went down to the bar and ordered some hair of the dog. The wound tingled a bit, he told me later, but it wasn't particularly painful. In fact, he felt almost like a new man after getting bitten. Since he got lucky and lost his virginity on the second night of the tour, he really didn't pay much attention to the wolf bite at all.

It was only after Morey/Leander returned to Columbus, on the night of the next full moon, that he got his first inkling of what had actually happened to him and what he had become. He read everything he could find about lycanthropy on line, and discovered that while his life was essentially over, he would not be damned for all eternity unless he tasted human blood.

"I wasn't too worried," he said. "Mother made sure I was a staunch vegetarian by the age of eight, and I'd never had a hankering for so much as a hamburger."

But all of a sudden he found himself drooling over road kill and salivating at the sight of scampering field mice. Favorite foods like brown rice and three-bean salad repulsed him. Still, despite the extreme changes in his dietary requirements, he clung to the hope that he would always have enough will power not to bite a human. But whenever the full moon rose overhead, Morey/Leander's fingernails and toenails would lengthen, fangs would appear, his hair would grow -- and his eyes would blaze with a wild inner fury, turn yellow and glow in the dark.

Carrot cake no longer satisfied him. He lusted for blood.

Human blood.

He tried everything to ease his pain: drugs, alcohol, network TV. Nothing worked. He lost all his money and became a bum. Finally he left Columbus and drifted south, winding up in a cheap trailer park outside of Dayton. It was there, amongst the bums, drunks, and drifters, that we first encountered one another and struck up a loose sort of friendship. A few weeks later Morey/Leander killed a guy and made us rich.

Whoa! I just realized I've been going on and on. LuLu didn't say anything about how long this column should be or exactly what it should be about, but my gut tells me I might be nudging the Rottweiler's rump about now. Then again, my readers need to get to know me.

I should wind this up anyway. My gut also tells me I'm hungry, and since Leander isn't sleeping well, I guess it's time for us to go out. We're coming down off a full moon, meaning he still has a pretty heavy five o'clock shadow and the nerves of a serious caffeine freak -- not to mention
seven-inch toenails.

But I'll be back next week to tell you all about how my owner got his new name, how I became Morey, how he nailed a crook outside a convenience store, damned his soul for all eternity, and a whole bunch of other interesting stuff, and I'll try not to bore anybody by going on too long.

Until then, sleep well, but take a tip from me and keep your blinds closed -- especially if you live anywhere near upscale Lincoln Park.

11:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I asked you to write a column about Lincoln Park," said LuLu the Beagle, while mercilessly shredding the paper copy of my first effort.

"You think it's that bad?"

She looked up, seemed surprised. "What? Oh, no, I just like to shred paper: garbage bags, newspapers, bank statements; you name it. If I can grab it off a table or it hits the floor, it's mine. The fact is, I kind of like your column. It's weird...but sort of agreeably different."

"So you want me to continue writing it?"

"Oh, sure," she replied distractedly, intent on gazing out the window next to Morey/Leander's computer desk. All at once she tensed, then lunged, smacking her nose against the glass. "Look, there's Rockie," she said, and her tail began to wag. "He's hot," she lauded. "Hotter than hot. Hotter than..."

"A grease fire?"

I joined her at the window and watched with a faint degree of jealousy as a large male Labrador with a coat the color of licorice loped across the driveway. He was well formed but so am I, and from what I could tell, Rockie had been neutered.

"I'm off," said LuLu, giving me a quick lick across the jowls. "Rockie's kind of my guy, you get what I mean? He gave me his balls last Christmas."

I flinched. "Is this some sort of trend in the suburbs?"

"Silly!" she chided. "They were rubber balls. Balls that somebody gave him, and I don't mean Mother Nature."

She went to the door. "Chow, Morey."

"Chow," I echoed, and watched as she hightailed it across the driveway. She has pretty legs for a Beagle and a nice little bounce to her hind quarters when she runs. But I keep remembering all the things the Prof told me about the frailty of females.

So anyway, here I am back at the computer keyboard, while Morey/Leander (who's at last fallen into a fitful sleep) snores away on the couch.

Right after we met, when we lived at the La Belle Roach trailer park just cattycorner to a junkyard, Morey/Leander -- who was then plain old Morey Soddenpocher, spent most of his days sleeping, but the moment it got dark, he was wide awake and itchy. As the night of the full moon drew ever closer each month, Morey would slowly begin his metamorphosis. Finally, when the moon was round and fat and hanging in the sky like a shiny boil, he would drive off in his mother's 1987 Chevy Caprice, with me in the big backseat, to rob local convenience stores.

"We have to live," he would explain, his blazing eyes filled with remorse. "We have to pay the rent, buy dog food for you, get gas for the car." I got it, and couldn't understand why he felt he had to justify himself to a dog. Then I figured out that he was mostly trying to justify himself to Morey the moralist -- to the guilt-ridden loser his mother had raised. "It's not as if I use a gun," he would tell me, "or a knife, or a harpoon."

This much was true. Morey didn't have to use a weapon to rob the stores he picked. The terrified clerks would take one look at him -- at the wild eyes, the sharp fangs, the whole horrendous package, and gladly hand over all the money in their cash drawers. I would sit patiently in the car and wait for him, and bark if I saw a police cruiser approaching. Not that an entire army of cops would have made a difference. Unless the police had guns loaded with silver bullets, or a handy vial containing mercury to pour down Morey's throat, there really wasn't much they could do to stop him. In other words, it's not easy to kill a werewolf. It's also not that easy to live with one, but since life has recently improved beyond my wildest imaginings, I'm not about to complain. Well, maybe a little now and again.

One night, around two a.m., Morey pulled our bus of a car into a convenience store parking lot, and squeezed in between a beat-up old truck and a gleaming vehicle that looked like it had been carved from wet onyx and burnished with fairy dust. Even in the semi-darkness there was an almost preternatural glow to the car, a glow that howled big bucks and proclaimed how the rich were truly different.

"Holy crap!" declared Morey, letting his tongue loll out of his mouth. "That's a Maserati Spyder! Oh, crap. Oh, crap. I've always dreamed about owning one of those." He hopped out of the Caprice, ran up to the car of his dreams, and made happy grunting sounds as he stroked one glistening fender with a matted paw.

After a few minutes, I started barking, hoping Morey would take the hint and remember the reason we were there. Now let's be honest. Even at two o'clock in the morning a werewolf in a parking lot stands out like, well, like a werewolf in a parking lot. Granted, werewolves are all but impossible to kill, but why take unnecessary chances? Our rent was already a week overdue, and I didn't relish the thought of becoming a junkyard dog, a sort of Plan B that I considered a last resort.

"All right, all right," snarled Morey. He gave the fender a final pat, went into the store and walked smack into the middle of a holdup.

There were three guys in the convenience store: a dirt bag holding a gun, a terrified clerk, and a sleek-looking guy wearing an expensive business suit and a pissed-off expression.

"Whaaa..." said the robber as Morey barged through the door. The sleek guy, who had his back turned, chose that inappropriate moment to dive for the gun and took a bullet between the eyes. The store clerk promptly passed out in terror, and after pumping a useless round of bullets into Morey, the dirt bag freaked, dropped the gun, and ran out the door, heading for his truck.

Morey went after him, grabbed him by the throat, and proceeded to beat him to a pulp. I could tell Morey was really pissed because after he beat him, he ripped out the guy's heart and ate it. Then he started howling at the moon until I began to bark again. He was annoyed and shot me the bird with his hairy middle finger, but I didn't care. He got the picture and went back inside the store to get what we'd come for in the first place.

The clerk saw him coming and passed out again, so Morey helped himself to the money in the cash drawer, paused to grab a tube of breath mints and a few cans of Classy Canine dog food for me, and finally knelt down and switched wallets with the sleek dead guy. He also picked up the keys to the Maserati Spyder.

"Let's get you into our new car," said Morey. "I'm going back for the clerk, and then I'm going to torch the place." I wagged my tail. For the first time since I'd met him, Morey the werewolf was acting like a guy with a set of cojones.

He hauled what was left of the dirt bag back inside the store, and a few minutes later I smelled smoke. Morey returned, carrying the unconscious clerk, and dumped him in the Caprice. "Let's see what we've got here," he said, and ripped open the sleek dead guy's wallet.

What we had was roughly ten thousand dollars.

Morey backed the Caprice under some trees at the far end of the lot, stuffed what he'd taken out of the cash drawer in the clerk's pants pockets, and tucked in a few thousand extra, so the clerk would be able to afford some decent therapy whether or not he had health insurance.

He got into the Maserati just as flames began to dance around inside the store like groupies in a mosh pit.

For a moment Morey just sat there, holding onto the steering wheel and staring through the window. "Man, I've damned myself for all eternity," he said, "and my soul is forever cursed."

There was an explosion and the store went up in flames. From somewhere not too far away came the wail of sirens. Morey patted my head and bared his fangs in a grin. "OK, old buddy," he said, "let's roll."

It wasn't until after we got back to the trailer park that we discovered a buttery-soft leather carrying case inside our new car. Morey tore it open and a ton of money fell out. A ton of money which numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Morey's eyes bulged, and he clutched at his hairy chest. I figured werewolves probably didn't have heart attacks, and I also figured we'd just hit the jackpot -- so I wolfed down an entire bowl of Classy Canine dog food, deciding to let the devil take tomorrow.

Aside from the fortune in the carrying case, and the wad in the sleek dead guy's wallet, Morey found a stack of credit cards and driver's licenses in various names. One of the names was "Leander," and Morey liked it. "I think it suits me," he said. "It will be my new name, my werewolf appellation. My damnation name!" He looked at me and tossed back his shaggy head. "Behold the wolf Leander - Leander Maserati! And you, my faithful dog and stalwart companion, can now be Morey.

Well, my column is way too long again this week, but I've pretty much filled you in on the rest of my background as well as Leander's. Next week I promise to write about Lincoln Park at night, when Leander can't sleep and we're out and about. Until then, remember to keep your blinds down and your curtains closed. Oh, and if you're the lady who lives in Apartment C, right across from the park -- you really need to stop exercising in the nude. Trust me on this one. You might also want to talk to your neighbor across the hall about his new website.

Until next time, as LuLu says: "Chow"~

1:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Back again! And I can't believe we've been in Lincoln Park for a couple of weeks now. We've got a Hi-Def TV, a garage for the Maserati, and Leander has a key to the exercise room. I don't have to worry about rats stealing my food, and I've even got my own pet door.

Living in Lincoln Park is paradise itself, although I have to admit that things are a lot less exciting than they were back in the old neighborhood, with all the drive-bys and drug busts. It's so quiet here. When Leander and I go out at night, I sometimes feel the isolation like a tight collar.

Since we're not even close to a full moon, Leander looks almost human again, but that doesn't help the way he acts. He's moody and irascible, but I guess werewolves are always that way; it's part of the evil aura. He's also nervous and fidgety, mainly because he's horny. Leander hasn't had any action since that fateful trip to Transylvania, and he needs a date the way good old boys from Texas need beer and birdshot.

He's especially keen on the curvaceous blonde rental agent who got us into this apartment. She showed up the other day, bouncing through the door, preceded by her breasts. Her heavy perfume smelled like gardenias and chicken, and when she looked at me I felt uncomfortable. There's something very odd about that girl, but I can't quite put my paw on it.

"I stopped over to see how you two cute guys are making out," she lied. Leander paid her a full year's rent in advance, and in cash no less, on the day we moved in. I could tell she was wary when the transaction went down, and nervous about Leander, which came as no surprise. She'd come over to check up on us, but I could tell Leander thought it was a social call.

The way he lunged off the sofa when she entered the room was not reassuring. His eyes glowed fiercely at the sight of her, his hands began to shake, and he responded to her mundane, chirpy inquiries with incoherent mumblings punctuated by fits of maniacal laughter. In an attempt to keep her from running off and phoning in a 311, I grabbed one of my chew toys and dropped it at her feet. Who can resist a playful, friendly dog, right?

Well, the blonde resisted. While doing her best to ignore Leander's little quirks, she managed to charm him into a quick walk-through of the apartment. When she was satisfied that the appliances were still in working order, there were no dead bodies littering up the place, and I hadn't pooped all over the freshly laid carpet, she marched off in her spikey high heels, leaving behind a set of stab marks in the rug.

She did not bother to say good-bye.

"Crap!" Leander growled. "I've got to work on my moves and try to come up with a few good lines. That babe makes my tail itch."

He sank onto the sofa and fell into a morass of despair. His favorite soaps didn't cheer him up, and the mating rituals shown on the Nature Channel seemed to depress him even further. Finally it got dark outside.

Leander stood up and stretched. "I feel like doing some peeping," he said.

Now Lincoln Park is built around a lake. Actually it's built around a large duck pond, but the locals refer to the chemically treated, stocked pond as "Lake Lincoln Park," which among other things doesn't say much for their collective creativity.

My understanding is that there used to be another lake (one made by Mother Nature) where this one is situated, but who knows if the story is true? If it is true, I've got an idea the original lake was much nicer than the man-made one we've got here now, although the ducks and geese that pollute the area might disagree. People feed them a steady diet of bread and popcorn, making them fat and lazy and disinclined to migrate.

So they stay put: eating, pooping and procreating -- and swimming in circles in the tainted blue water. I guess they figure they've hit the big time, and maybe they have. I think they're just too stoned to know what they're missing.

"Let's walk," said Leander, who was wearing his usual peeping gear: a flasher raincoat over a T-shirt and short shorts, and a pair of flip-flops. "I need to unwind before getting down to business,' he explained. "Something to eat might also be nice."

So we walked. I sniffed at piles of goose poop, while Leander went after the ducks, forcing them to take to the air in order to avoid being eaten. I found a dead fish, and he gulped it down. A mouse darted past, so he dropped the fish bones and took off after it. He came back a few seconds later, looking disappointed; evidently the mouse had come up with a good exit strategy.

"I really need human blood," he confessed, "but I'm so hungry, McDonald's or Burger King will have to do."

Uh-ho, I thought, laid my head on my paws, and heaved a loud, grumbling sigh.

"You're right," he conceded. "The last time we tried that, I came down with the trots." He looked up at the tiny sliver of moon that was visible in the cold night sky. "Her name is Brianna," he said, and I knew he was talking about the blonde. "She walks in beauty like the night...and what a set of taillights that babe has got."

Leander tore across the street, heading back toward our apartment complex, and I followed at a more sedate pace. Suddenly my hackles rose. It was very dark out, but in the faint glow provided by a streetlamp, I thought I saw what looked like a flash of gray fur in the woods behind us. I sniffed at the air but couldn't smell much except for the lingering scent of Leander's fish breath, and the faint stench of werewolf sweat. But my gut instincts have kept me alive for this long; I went on red alert.

Leander said he knew where Brianna lived, and after creeping around her building for a few minutes, he finally clawed his way through a clump of prickly bushes and began scaling the wall leading to her bedroom window, which just happened to be on the third floor.

It occurred to me that it might be easier to enter the building, climb out on the roof, then hop down onto her balcony. But Leander sometimes likes to do things the hard way, and scaling walls is about the only way he can pare his toenails.

He was almost to the third floor when it started to rain, and the rain turned to hail. It was right about then that he also realized the blonde had her blinds closed. Roaring his dismay, Leander dropped to the ground, lost his flip-flops, and tore his raincoat.

Lights came on inside the building, meaning it was definitely time to call it a night and head home. But halfway back to our apartment, I got that strange feeling again, and whipped around scarcely in time to see a coyote duck behind a Honda. Now, there's an old legend about the lone coyote, but don't you believe it. Like snakes, they generally travel in pairs. Sure enough, lurking near a denuded dogwood tree, a mere training-leash length from our front door, was another one. I bared my teeth and prepared to use them.

"Go back," said coyote number one...

"...where you came from," concluded coyote number two.

Then they hightailed it into the night, leaving me somewhat perplexed, but at least giving me something to write about.

Hopefully I'll have more interesting stuff to tell you next week. Until then, paws up and good sniffing...unless you're a couple of stray coyotes.

YOU can bite my dewclaw.

1:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, Morey here again with good news and bad news. The good news is that spring is right around the corner; the bad news is, it's getting closer to the night of the full moon, and my current owner, Leander Maserati, is starting to look less like a human and more like a werewolf again. He's now got a five o'clock shadow like an SOS pad, his teeth are starting to stretch, and the hair on the back of his hands is becoming matted. He growls a lot and mumbles to himself about ripping out throats. But he's also managed to retain a softer side.

The softer side shows up every time he starts thinking about Brianna, the bosomy, blonde bimbette of his dreams. He weeps, he recites poetry. Sometimes he throws up. If this is love, you can have it, although I will admit that my heart beats a little faster whenever I sneak out through the pet door and run into LuLu the bodacious Beagle, who is technically my boss, even though I'm only getting paid in dog biscuits. Since she edits this column, I know she's aware of my feelings, but her heart belongs to Rockie, a lumbering Labrador, who is the idol of all the red-hot bitches in the park. One of these days I'm going to have to find out why.

Anyhoo, whenever Leander and I go out at night, so he can peep through his neighbors' windows, Brianna has her blinds down, meaning he can't see a thing. That's now become a problem, because he hasn't seen anything of her since she stopped by our apartment last week to find out if we were using it as a house of pain and pleasure, or a meth lab.

"I can't stand it," he said yesterday. "I've got to see her. I don't care if she shuns me. I don't care if she spits on me. I HAVE to see her."

So, wrapped up in histrionics though he was, Leander managed to slip into his T-shirt and short shorts, and he covered his long toenails by stuffing his feet into a pair of Nikes the size of a Great Dane's bingles. Finally he put on his flasher coat, tucked his budding bushy tail inside his shorts, and we set out in the middle of the afternoon for the leasing office, to find his lost love.

Once there, we followed the sound of a TV into a little room where two girls I'll call Giggle and Snort were watching a soap while stuffing themselves with Chinese carryout. Now Leander's a major soap opera fan, so he stared hard at the TV for a second, then asked: "Has Jennifer told Jerrid about her baby's surrogate being a Preso Canario, or about Cragg discovering he's an hermaphrodite yet?"

"No," said Giggle, giggling, while making no effort to take her eyes off the action on the screen. "Jennifer just found out Jerrid's her bio-dad's adopted twin brother, so they'll probably have to cancel the wedding, and they've already paid the caterer a bundle.

Snort snorted. "You got a backed-up toilet or something?" She turned around and choked on her egg roll.

"I'm looking for Brianna," said Leander, attempting to wither her with a minacious glare. "Where is she?"

Snort looked confused, like she didn't know whether to laugh or scream. "Love your costume," she said at last, and punched Giggle on the shoulder. The other girl turned around and got a glimpse of Leander.

"My Gawd! Ain't you bizarre?" she giggled. "But Halloween was a couple of months ago, wasn't it? Or am I getting it confused with Christmas -- or what's the other one?"

"Presidents' Day?" suggested Leander.

"Huh?"

"Brianna," he reminded them, baring his teeth.

"She's gone camping with her new boyfriend," said Snort, sounding a little less jocular and a whole lot of nervous. "Took her sick days, like you know, I go: 'Well, we're like short here in the office,' but she tells me to suck eggs." She was about to snort but thought the better of it.

"She'll be back on Monday," promised Giggle. "Uh, is that some sort of boa between your legs? I mean, not that I'm like a homeyprobe. I mean, I LOVE Heath Ledger."

Leander glanced down; his tail was dragging along the floor. Upset and embarrassed, he threw back his head and howled. The two girls dropped their chopsticks and huddled together in fear.

I barked and tugged at his coat.

Leander charged out of the office, growling with rage and tearing his hair. He knocked flat a young guy who was talking to yet another rental agent about signing a lease.

"Uh, Marla," said the guy, getting to his feet and brushing himself off, "I'm all for diversity, but I think I'll pass on this one."

I cantered after Leander, who was completely out of control. When we got back to our apartment, he locked himself in his bedroom and spent the rest of the day listening to his mother's old Neil Sedaka records, while I took comfort in a bag of beef jerky.

By the wee small hours Leander was ready for mayhem; he was also prepared to throw caution to the wind and go to a fast-food restaurant. He got the Maserati Spyder out of the garage, I hopped onto the seat beside him, and we tore off down the driveway going at least eighty miles an hour.

"I need to work off some steam," he said, so we hit the freeway exceeding a hundred.

Now, I'm aware that werewolves might be immortal, but regular old mutts like me aren't. I curled up on the seat, covered my head with my paws, and waited for the crash. Instead I heard the wail of a siren.

A police car gave chase, and Leander pulled across the median to dodge it. I knew we were doomed, but incredibly Leander managed to maneuver the car back to the right side of the road and zipped up an on-ramp before the police could catch us. I figured there would soon be an all-points out for us, although I knew something like that wouldn't bother Leander. After all, what could anybody do to him?

He two-wheeled it into the driveway of a fast-food restaurant about a block from Lincoln Park, and pulled up behind a kid in a Ford Focus. The kid was exchanging hormonal grunts with a skinny girl at the drive-through window.

"Get a move on!" bellowed Leander.

"Screw you!" responded the kid.

Leander got out of the Spyder, loped over to the Focus, and punctured the tires with his sharp, pointed toenails. The kid's cocky grin slipped like putty. He jumped out of the car and ran.

Leander turned to the skinny girl at the window. "Could I get some extra napkins with my order?" he asked her.

She threw a raw hamburger at him, slammed the window shut and started screaming.

Leander wolfed down the burger in the car as we headed home. "How could she have a boyfriend?" he mused. "And who would go camping in the winter?"

As we turned into our own driveway, I heard the wail of sirens coming from somewhere not far behind us. Leander seemed unperturbed.

He parked the Spyder in the garage and closed the door. When he turned around, he almost tripped over LuLu, who was out for a walk at two a.m. with her owner, an eccentric older lady who's reputed to be a witch.

"I can help," she said, but Leander was in no mood to listen.

"Nobody can help me," he said. "I'm damned for all eternity, and I've just eaten at a fast-food restaurant."

"That's a bitch," the psychic agreed.

LuLu winked at me and wagged her tail.

When we got back to the apartment, Leander was violently sick.

I sat down and went to work on this column. I hope LuLu likes it.

If so, I'll be back next week to tell you more interesting tales of Lincoln Park after dark.

Chow.

11:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Is your mistress for sure a witch?" I asked LuLu the day after the night of the full moon.

She looked up from the book she was reading, a sleazy mystery novel entitled 'Puppies in Lust.'
"Who told you she was a witch?"

"You did!" I reminded her. "And why are you reading a piece of slezoid trash like 'Puppies in Lust'?"

"Because I wrote it," she informed me. "Any other barking questions?"

Uh-ho. So now LuLu's not speaking to me, and I thought we were getting along so well. Anyway, how was I to know she wrote the barking book? According to the cover, somebody named Winona Whippet wrote it.

"Winona Whippet," LuLu coldly enlightened me, "is my pen name." At which point, she and her pseudonym presented me with a proud posterior and left in a huff through the pet door.

Which is just great. I really need to find somebody who can help Leander cope with his personalilty disorder, and a garden-variety shrink is unlikely to cut it. To my way of thinking, a witch sounds a lot more viable. Or did until I infuriated her familiar.

On the recent night of the full moon, Leander managed to complete his transformation into a werewolf even before the sun went down, which tells me he's shedding his human characteristics at an alarming rate, and it won't be long before I'll have a full lupine, instead of a half-human, roommate. When that happens, all the money in the world won't help us; we'll be kicked out of this apartment and probably sent to the pound. Since he's all but immortal, Leander will escape the worst, but what about me? When you're born under a bridge and you finally get your paws on something good, you sort of want to hold onto it. But Leander and I are on shaky ground here, and don't I just know it?

At any rate, as soon as the moon was waxing fuller than a pregnant hippo in the jelly-donut aisle, Leander took off into the night to look for a victim. He spied a couple of deer cutting through the apartment complex on their way back to the woods by the pond, snarled fiercely, and lunged at them.

"Oh, give us a break!" declared the buck. "My wife and I just moved here from the next suburb over. They hate deer so much over there, the're thinking of hiring a couple of guys with crossbows to wipe out our herd."

The doe nodded sadly. "Some maniac with a bow and arrow chased my cousin through a bird sanctuary only last week." She shook her head. "People revere us over the holidays. They even line their driveways with plastic Rudolphs, but the moment we show up in animal form, they want to kill us."

Now even at his worst Leander has a conscience, although pity probably wasn't his inspiration for a sudden change of heart regarding the deer. He looked up and saw a guy climbing a stepladder that had been placed against the wall of his beloved's building, right under her bedroom window.

"The boyfriend!" he roared, and left the deer so fast, they choked on his dust.

"Dear me," said the doe, giving a ladylike sneeze.

"Let's amscray," suggested her husband, which proved to be a good idea, especially when you consider the ghastly scene that unfolded seconds later.

Because I'm a nice dog and not really into the lurid, I'll make the description brief: a fallen ladder, a muffled scream, a loud howl...followed by a silence so profound, you couldn't hear a squirrel titter.

"Too cool," said a voice from somewhere behind me.

"Way too cool," said another.

I watched as Leander dragged his inert victim into the bushes, then whipped about to face the coyotes.

"You want a piece of me?" I snarled. "Well, bite my dewclaw!"

The coyotes cocked their heads and gave me an arch look. "We want to be buds," they announced in unison, and promptly introduced themselves.

"I'm Rush," said one.

"And I'm Randhi," said the other. "We're two sides..."

"...of the same coin."

"You want to be buds?" I growled. "Then how come you've been following me? Last week you told me to go back where I came from."

They shrugged, looked unperturbed.

"We're coyotes," said Rush. "We're supposed to mess with you."

"It's what we do," added Randhi. "It's like our leitmotif."

Leander fought his way out of the bushes and crossed the driveway covered in blood. Rush and Randhi scrambled beneath an SUV. "Whoa," I heard one say. "Fazizzle," said the other.

Leander was carrying what looked like a wallet, and despite the fact he was a gory mess, he also looked subdued. "I don't think the guy was her boyfriend," he told me. "According to a card I found, he was a private detective."

I glanced meaningfully toward the bushes and barked. Leander understood.

"I hate to be a litterbug, but I guess we'll just have to leave him there," he said. "His feet are sticking out over the sidewalk, so he'll be easy to find. The paperboy will probably discover him in the morning."

"Psst!" That came from Randhi.

"What?" I barked, trying hard not to think about the poor paperboy's reaction.

"We'll plop the carcass for you," offered Rush.

"Drop the box, sink the slab," Randhi clarified.

And just what do you two get out of it, I was about to ask, but the headlights from an oncoming car truncated the conversation.

I could tell Leander was high and ready to jump on the hood just for the fun of it, but I didn't give him the chance. I knocked him out of the way, and the car went past us.

"Dogs!" grumbled Leander, showing a serious lack of gratitude, and he loped off to howl at the moon.

"Do your thing," I barked at Rush and Randhi, who both high-fived me with their tails as they padded toward the corpse in the bushes.

So here I am with one more column under my collar; I hope LuLu likes it.

I also hope that Rush and Randhi buried the PI's bones deep.

Until next week -- that's all from Morey.

PS: A Happy St. Patrick's Day to all you Irish Setters out there!

10:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"A soupcon too decayed for my tastes," LuLu commented. "But there's a hint of tree sap in the marrow that's rather piquant."

I nodded, but was not impressed with what we were munching on -- a freebie hors d'oeuvre my editor had managed to unearth in the woods. To me it tasted like a Number Two pencil dipped in WD-40. And I'm definitely a dog who knows about such things.

"At least the bones aren't human," I remarked. "Probably squirrel from the looks of them."

LuLu gave a knowing wink. "The coyotes always bury what's left of their kills next to the base of one of those hideous statues over in the park," she said. "The all-powerful city beautification committee put them there, and since they're considered to be as brutal in their dealings as the KGB at the height of its power, you know those statues are inviolate."

She delicately spat out what looked like a tiny gold earring. "So you can relax," she went on. "You don't have to worry about anybody -- the police, for instance, digging up the remains of that guy Leander killed."

"Are you talking about the statue that looks like two pooper scoopers wrapped around a giant toothbrush, or the one that looks like a birdcage on top of an old Studebaker?" I asked her.

She smiled. "What difference does it make? If I tell you, you'll probably run over there to check it out, and since you would be a dog off the leash, running free on city property, you could get into a whole lot of trouble."

Although we were having a conversation, LuLu is still not "officially" speaking to me, or so I've been informed. She's miffed because I made fun of her most recent literary effort -- a novel salaciously entitled "Puppies in Lust." But LuLu's clever brain is nicely punctuated with plots and schemes, and like most females, she is not much bothered by scruples.

It was last Saturday night, and she and I were lying out on my patio while she kept an eye out for Rockie the Lab. She was using me to make him jealous, and since I'm about as lonely and desperate as a hairless Chinese Crested with herpes, I was letting her do it.

"I suppose you have a date every Saturday night?" I angled clumsily, making it pretty obvious I never did.

"There's Rockie," she said, which neatly summed things up. I saw the Lab staring in our direction with hot eyes and bated breath -- and bared my teeth.

LuLu got to her paws, leaned over and licked my nose. "Don't be so silly," she said.

Her breath reeked of earth and rot. Holy Cerberus! This is one exciting bitch! I thought.

But without so much as a good-bye, she high-stepped it across the driveway to meet her boyfriend. I watched as they smacked hips and began nuzzling. I was disgusted -- not to mention downhearted, depressed, and forlorn.

I crawled in through the pet door, and jumped up on the sofa next to Leander, who was staring at the TV, mesmerized by a beauty pageant. One of the contestants looked a little like Brianna, the bimbette of his dreams. I accidentally sat down on the remote and the action switched to a horror film. George Hamilton was playing a vampire who was madly in love with Susan St. James in an old movie -- "Love at First Bite."

Leander was first moved to tears and finally to heartbroken howls. Our next-door neighbor turned his music up high enough to make it sound like a Hummer was being castrated, and the building began to shake ominously.

I hopped off the sofa, padded across the room, curled up under Leander's computer desk, and put my paws over my ears. Why, I wondered, couldn't I be the dog outside in the soft darkness, fetching sticks with LuLu?

Then I reminded myself (as I am forever reminding myself) just how far I'd come from the La Belle Roach Trailer Park with it's drive-by shootings, drunken brawls, and drug busts.

At the very least I'd moved uptown.

Despite the racket, I willed myself to sleep, a little trick I learned in the course of my deprived puppy hood. When I woke up hours later the apartment felt empty, and since I couldn't catch Leander's scent, I realized he had gone out peeping without me. I was slightly hurt and a little insulted, although I couldn't quite put a paw on why. It's not as if I actually enjoy doing things with Leander, and since I'm a dog, peeping in windows in hopes of seeing a naked human female is about as high on my list of "feel goods" as having to play a game of chase-the-squeak-toy with a three-legged lap dog.

I try to tell myself that since I'm a dog, it should be second nature for me to be faithful and loyal. Then again Lassie was faithful and loyal, and she wound up wasting her life hauling a moronic kid out of abandoned mine shafts.

Am I to suffer a similar fate?

While I was mulling such deep philosophical questions, I almost got whacked in the head by the pet door as Rush the coyote shimmied inside, and dropped a page torn out of a newspaper on the floor. "Dog, you gotta eyeball this," he told me, panting with excitement or a need to pee.

I stared down at the piece of paper. "You want me to read 'Mary Worth' or 'Rex Morgan, MD'?"

"Wha? Oh, I am so outta the frame!" He smacked his head against the wall. "I mean, I could've brought over something a little more au courrant, my brother."

"Well, yeah," I said. "I suppose so. But why did you bring anything at all?"

Randhi chose that moment to slip cautiously through the pet door, and dropped another page of the paper on the floor. "The goods they are delivered," he said. "Uh, the werewolf ain't to home right now, is he?"

"No," I replied, carefully smoothing out the second piece of newspaper with my paws, and noting it was the front page of the local morning edition.

"Read, read," urged the two coyotes. "This is major..."

"...mojo, Dog."

"FORMER CEO FOUND DEAD," blared a headline. "Woman Companion Missing."

I glanced up at the coyotes.

They stood there panting, their yellow eyes glinting, the stench from their coats stinking. "Keep going," they insisted.

I gave up, sat back on my haunches and read the article.

It seemed that a guy named Jack Sheppard, until recently the CEO of a Fortune 500 company called ConJob, had gone missing and now had turned up dead -- in fact, "mangled beyond recognition" at a remote campsite not far from Springfield, Ohio. His female companion, thought to be a rental agent from Lincoln Park, was also missing and presumed dead. Search dogs had been sent out in hopes of locating her body.

"Brianna?" I asked.

"Brianna," Rush and Randhi barked in unison.

So there you have it, and hopefully Leander doesn't. I hate to think what his reaction will be if he finds out the bimbette is as dead as the PI buried over in the park.

"Road-kill dead," pronounced Randhi.

"As done dead as truth in advertising," declared Rush.

Meanwhile, Happy Spring to all my readers. And hopefully you won't tell anybody what's going on over here in upscale Lincoln Park. Not that anyone would believe you anyway.

Until next week -- Chow...from Morey.

12:58 AM  

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