Page 24 of Stella's Christmas Rescue
I glare at her front door from my truck. “Thanks for putting that image in my head, Michael. You’re taking her next call.”
“Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“And what would that be, exactly?”
“Not much,” he laughs, before he hangs up.
I hang up and sigh. I don’t even remember Mrs. Black having a cat. Her farm is small, like most of them around Floyd. But she keeps all sorts of animals around, so she might have a cat. Who knows? I hope her goats don’t jump on my truck again. They scratched it all to hell last time.
Her white farmhouse has a newly refurbished wraparound porch, and in the spring, she has potted herbs in every direction. For today, though, I’m just glad to have a place to wait out of the snow. When she opens the door, heat pours from the opening.
“Jordan, I am so sorry to be a bother,” the old lady says in her Southern drawl. Despite her age, Mrs. Black’s face carries only the smallest wrinkles. She has an hourglass figure, odd for someone in her eighties. Her heavy red sweater and jeans join with her shiny white hair to make me think of the American flag, and I fight the urge to salute her.
I shake my head. Then, I tell her, “You’re no bother, Mrs. Black. Where is your cat?”
Her hands are on her hips when she sasses, “Mycat? No, no, no, those boys at the firehouse don’t listen anymore when I call, I tell you what. An old woman calls, and they don’t listen. What would they do if it were an emergency, Jordan?”
“Then, what seems to be the trouble?”
“There’s a bobcat in the tree over my chicken coop. That mangy bastard has been terrorizing my chickens and now they won’t lay!”
“Ah.”
She gets testy when she asks, “So, can you help me out? I’m not sure who else to call. We don’t have Animal Control?—"
I nod. “I’ve got it. No problem, I always keep my shotgun in the truck. What do you want done with the carcass?”
“Carcass? No, dear, it’s very much alive.” She frowns.
The poor confused thing. I smile, “When I’m done shooting it down?—"
“If I had wanted it shot down, then I would have shot it down, Jordan Waters.” She shakes her head, almost violently. “Absolutely no harm is to come to that mangy bastard, or any other animal on my land. I simply want it gone.”
“You want it chased away?”
She nods, “I tried banging pots and screaming at it, but that seemed to only make it more stubborn and upset the chickens even more.”
Does she understand how this works? “If I only chase it away, there’s a good chance that it will come back. You get that, right?”
“Then, maybe I should have the tree cut down, so it can’t get a good perch over my hens.”
I sigh. “One chased bobcat. Coming right up.” I walk around her porch to her backyard. Sure enough, the chickens are all hiding inside their home in the chicken coop fencing. Thankfully, Mrs. Black was smart enough to build one with a roof. The open—top coops always lose some hens to the hawks. Sure enough, a bobcat sits perched over the coop in the gnarled oak tree. Even with the snow on the branches, it was camouflaged. “Aw, buddy. That’s not where you belong.”
I wasn’t halfway up the icy cold tree, when Mrs. Black comes out to shout, “Don’t hurt him!”
I grunt, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Maybe I should have called a trapper.”
“Well,” I shimmy up the trunk, “you called me.”
“Jordan Waters, don’t you sass me! I have gotten absolutely no help from you flyboys at the firehouse, and I pay my taxes, so I expect some help now and then.”
I explain, “Mrs. Black, we’re volunteers. You don’t pay us anything.”
“Oh, well, that’s good. Watch that branch, it’s a little?—"
The branch I grabbed for tumbles to the ground and the cat hisses at me. “Yeah, you and me both, pal.” I grab for another one, and it holds. I’m almost there.
