Read Online The Happiest Season by Rosemarie Naramore - Free Book Online Page B

Before he could hang up on her again, she said
in a rush, “Look, I don’t make crank calls.  Are you aware of the camel that
showed up in my backyard last weekend?  He was an escapee from the live
nativity on display at a church not too far from my house.  Anyway, it seems he
has a friend…”
    Maggie heard a tussle of activity, followed by a muffled
sound as if someone had placed a hand over the receiver, and then finally, the
man said in a monotone voice, “I’ll dispatch Officer Dutch.”
    “Thank you,” Maggie said crisply, and hung up the phone.
    By now, Rickey was back by the sliding door, face to face
with the donkey.  The animal had thankfully stopped kicking at Maggie’s lawn,
and seemed oddly interested in Rickey.  They both stood with their noses
pressed to the slider.  Both were leaving tufts of breath on the formerly clean
glass.
    To Maggie’s horror, the animal reared back and bashed its
head against the glass.  Fortunately, Rickey pulled back in the nick of time or
he might have been hurt.
    “What does it want?” Maggie cried, alarmed.
    “Cookies?” Rickey answered with a shrug.
    “Uh, okay, yeah.  We’ll give it a try.”  She dashed over to
the window above the kitchen sink and slid it open.  She glanced back at
Rickey.  “Honey, grab me a few cookies from the cookie jar.”
    “Okay, Mama,” he obliged.  He raced into the kitchen, yanked
the lid off the cookie jar, and scooped out a handful of Christmas cookies. 
“Here, Mama!”
    She took them from him.  “Here, donkey, donkey, donkey,” she
called.
    Rickey ran back to the slider.  “Mama, get ready.  It’s
coming toward you.”
    Maggie braced, unsure what to expect.  Would the donkey jam
its upper body through the window, as the camel had done?  Was it tall enough
to reach the window?
    Just as it arrived at the window, Maggie tossed the cookies
over its head and out into the yard.  The donkey spun around and charged after
the cookies, letting out an apparently delighted ‘hee-haw’. 
    Unfortunately, it polished the cookies off faster than
Maggie had anticipated, and immediately returned for more.  “Oh, good grief,”
she murmured, as she pulled several more cookies out of the jar.  Once again,
she tossed them over the donkey’s head, and once again, it downed them in
record time and returned for more. 
    When Maggie didn’t immediately comply with his donkey
demands, he struggled to lift his head high enough to see through the open
window.  He let out a loud, fierce sound.  He was clearly enraged that he
wasn’t receiving cookies fast enough and he began huffing and puffing through
his large nostrils, flinging out what Maggie could only believe to be … donkey
snot.
    “Oh, gross!” Rickey bellowed.  “Mama, close the window!”
    Thankfully, the doorbell rang.  Both Maggie and Rickey raced
to answer it.  This time, when they found John standing on the porch, he didn’t
waste a second.  After registering Maggie’s alarmed face, he ran past mother
and son and into the kitchen.
    They were only a second or two behind him, but in that time,
the donkey had somehow managed to cover John with the remaining contents of its
nose.  They found him, frozen in place, his arms splayed out at his sides. 
    He turned toward Maggie and snared her gaze.  “If I shoot
it, will you back me up that it was justifiable homicide?”
    She didn’t hesitate to nod, but then burst out laughing when
Rickey rammed a large candy cane into its mouth.  The donkey held it between
its teeth, and like the camel, it seemed to love that candy cane.  It pulled
back from the window and began chomping on the treat. 
    John, whose hand was poised above his revolver, seemed
torn.  Maggie laid a reassuring hand on his arm.  “You probably don’t have to
shoot it now.  It seems calmer.”
    “It might be, but I’m not,” he groused, still staring down
at his soiled uniform. 
    “You’ll need to get your uniform to a