Part 10 (2/2)

”Watch this,” he said. He pushed a bit of lettuce through the wire, and she immediately grabbed it in her paw-hands, washed it carefully in the water bowl, and ate it like a miniature human at a picnic. No wonder they were called Procyon lotor, meaning ”washer dog.”

”And,” I went on, ”if Father doesn't shoot her, then Viola will. You know how she is about her garden.”

He cooed at Bandit and fed her another lettuce leaf.

”And they grow wild as they get older. They don't make good pets. You know that, right?”

”I found her in the scrub. She was all by herself and crying.”

”Was it near Lula's place? Her father says they've been losing chickens.”

Travis did not answer.

Exasperated, I said, ”Did you look for the mother?”

”What? Oh. Well ... yes.”

”Travis.”

”She was starving! She was lonely! What could I do? You wouldn't have left her, either. Just look at her, Callie. She's cute as a bug's ear.”

Bandit munched on her lettuce, turning it in her clever little hands, all the while gazing at us with alert black eyes. Yep, completely adorable. At least for a while.

”Besides,” he went on, ”n.o.body has to know.”

”Do you really think you can keep a secret like this?” I said skeptically.

”Of course. No one has to know.”

That night at supper, Father said to Travis, ”So, young man, Alberto tells me you are keeping a c.o.o.n in the barn. Is that right?”

Travis gaped. He obviously hadn't had time to work up a good story and had been caught flat-footed. Alberto was the hired man, and Father paid his wages. Of course he would report such goings-on.

Father said, ”You know how I feel about c.o.o.ns and such. Varmints, all of them.”

”Yes, Father,” he said, head bowed. ”I'm sorry.” He raised his head and mustered his arguments: ”She's an orphan, you see, and she was starving when I found her. I couldn't just leave her there. And I promise to take good care of her. I'll keep her away from the henhouse, I promise.”

Father looked at Mother, who sighed deeply but had nothing to add, having no doubt been worn down by variations of the same argument over the years.

”All right,” said Father grudgingly. ”But if there's any trouble, any trouble at all, I'll shoot it myself and feed it to the dogs. Is that understood?”

”Yessir.” Travis beamed his heartbreaking smile, which even drew a half smile from Father, so potent was its force.

Thus began the saga of Bandit. What made her more troublesome than Armand and Jay put together were her boundless curiosity and her busy little paws. They were more like hands than paws, really, in that she could open anything. Travis put a puppy collar on her, and she had it off within five minutes. He made a tiny harness for her from leather sc.r.a.ps, and she had it off within ten minutes. Then he hit on the idea of putting the buckle between her shoulder blades, the one place she couldn't reach. Yet. He put her on a leash and tried to take her for walks, which so infuriated her that she leaped and thrashed like a hooked trout to the point of exhaustion. He figured out that he could coax her to follow him for a few feet with bits of cheese, discovering along the way that she would eat anything-literally anything-that could remotely be construed as edible. Potato peels, kitchen sc.r.a.ps, garbage, rotting fish heads-she relished it all. After carefully was.h.i.+ng it, that is; her fastidiousness about the disgusting things she put in her mouth amused us both.

”She's what's called an omnivore,” I said, ”an animal that's somewhere between an herbivore that only eats plants and a carnivore that only eats meat. Granddaddy says it's a survival mechanism that allows such creatures to adapt to all sorts of habitats. Coyotes are the same. They can live practically anywhere.”

And she could escape practically anything. There was no cage that could hold her for more than a day or two. She quickly became attached to Travis, chirruping in distress when he locked her up at bedtime.

”I hate to leave her by herself at night,” he said. ”She gets so lonely and unhappy.” He cast his eyes at me sideways.

”You must be joking,” I said. ”You can't possibly take her in the house.”

”Well...”

”Absolutely not. I'll do some research on what we can do to calm her down. But you have to promise-promise-not to even think about taking her inside.”

”Okay. I sure hate to see her sad.”

”Doing some research” sounded much grander than the reality, which was that I went and talked to Granddaddy, the font of all knowledge when it came to kingdom Animalia.

He listened gravely and said, ”The kits are admittedly appealing. They are gregarious creatures when young and can be tamed if caught early enough. But the adults rarely make satisfactory pets, and when they reach adulthood, their temperaments change. They are no longer in need of human company, and are, in fact, capable of biting the hand that feeds them.”

”So they really do turn mean later on.”

”Quite so. As for your question about how to keep the animal content in a cage, I suggest you read the Guide to Texas Mammals for suggestions.”

I pulled down the volume and read that baby racc.o.o.ns are social creatures that become distressed when separated from their family and are happiest when sleeping in a pile of their siblings. And yes, the book confirmed Granddaddy's p.r.o.nouncement about the adults.

But when I told Travis that Bandit might turn on him someday, he merely pooh-poohed the idea, saying, ”Look at that sweet little face.”

We both looked at Bandit who, at that opportune moment, as if understanding we were discussing her future, sat on her hind legs, c.o.c.ked her head, and held out her paws as if begging.

”Abination of latches and levers, all wired shut, and stood back to admire our escape-proof cage.

I said to Travis, ”You misnamed her.”

”What do you mean? Bandit's the perfect name.”

”You should have called her Houdini.”

Two days later, Bandit/Houdini escaped from her ”escape-proof” cage. Travis ran to me and begged for help.

”We have to find her. The dogs will get her, or some farmer will shoot her,” he said, fighting back tears. We searched for her everywhere, even going into the scrub, but I knew that if she'd made it that far, we'd never see her again.

Travis was bereft. Lamar mocked his grief and called him a t.i.tty-baby well out of earshot of our parents, which was fortunate, as they couldn't hear Lamar yelp when I kicked him in the s.h.i.+ns.

When Travis went out to feed Bunny early the next morning, there was Bandit sitting on top of her cage, waiting for breakfast. I wasn't witness to the poignant reunion but I heard all about it in detail. The sun returned to Travis's face and stayed there, at least until the next time she disappeared. This became her pattern: disappearing for a while, returning for a while; happy to see Travis and accept a handout and just as happy to slip away again. Her absences gradually grew longer, as Granddaddy had predicted they would.

Unfortunately, they didn't grow long enough. One Sunday after returning from church, my parents went upstairs to rest before lunch. Travis was grooming Bunny in the barn when he heard a terrible ruckus in the henhouse, and there crouched Bandit, at her feet a dead hen covered in blood, its neck awry. Travis flew into a panic, knowing she had called a death sentence down upon herself.

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