EPILOGUE

'Mercy,' Miss Greenfield chuckled, her kindly grey eyes settling on me after Nibble insisted I accompany him back to Moon Fire Creek farm and I spent the better part of a day telling her this story.

Nice to have met you at last, I replied, no idea we had such interesting neighbors.

'Don't know just how interesting we are,' Miss Greenfield observed, 'moved here after all that fuss... disappearing again... guess we haven't had time yet to meet our neighbors.''

'Your story is pretty hard to swallow, young man,' Mike Armstrong said, rocking back and forth, nodding his head thoughtfully while staring intently at Nibble and Moon who sat by, self consciously, nipping at imaginary ticks. 'Certainly gives us humans somethin' to think about, doesn't it?' He gazed out over the valley towards the mountains beyond, finding it difficult to deal with what he'd just heard. 'If what this fella says is true, that he's talked with these dogs and that Nibble was Dr. Allen, well... it just can't be.'

'Shall I ever be able to hear you?' Miss Greenfield asked and eyed Nibble wistfully. 'As you were once Dr. Allen, I'm certainly glad I always treated you respectfully...'

"You can still call me Nibble," said Nibble, but Miss Greenfield couldn't seem to hear him.

'... but I know this much, when I first laid eyes on you in that animal shelter, I heard this voice inside telling me to get you two pooches out of there...sorry, Moon dear...mercy... Crystal dear... I didn't mean to call you a pooch.'

Moon wagged her tail. Nibble got up, ambled over to Rae and buried his head in her lap and I translated. He's saying...'Don't worry... you've treated us very well indeed, so well that we've been happier with you than we were as humans.'

'Mercy,' cried Rae, 'what an interesting thought!'

'You really heard him say that?' Mike asked, 'You wouldn't be puttin' us on, now would'ya? I've been watchin' that dog and haven't seen him open his mouth or even look at you...'

He wasn't talking to me he was talking to Rae, here, I replied. His mouth moves so fast you can't see it move, and you hear him inside your head ... at least I do...'

'Tell me, Mr Adams, are you some kind of psychic or have you been smoking too much of the cannabis they seem to grow around here?'

You can call me Buck, I replied... no, Ma'am, I'm an Organic Farmer and a gambler, lost a fortune in Vegas once, still meet some family expenses gambling, but never thought of myself as psychic and I don't do grass. When I first heard Nibble talking to me I thought I'd gone crazy. If I'm making this up, how would I have been able to tell you the story of what happened to you since you met Nibble?

'You make it all seem very logical even believable, but my problem is going to be how to treat these two divine creatures now that I know who they were... sorry, are... Mercy! It's so confusing...I've joked so many times with people about souls going into other bodies, but... well, of course, I thought I was joking!'

Nibble and Moon wagged their tails and yelped softly.

'I suppose you're going to tell me they understand what I'm saying?'

Every word, I replied.

'Mind-boggling,' said Rae

'You think we can ever learn to hear them?' Mike asked, thoughtfully.

If you have silence around you and listen hard... for a long time I thought I was the only one who could hear them and never talked to Nibble unless I was alone with him for fear my wife Charlotte and our children would hear me and think I was crazy. Later I found out the children were hearing him and they taught my wife how. They were afraid to tell me because they thought I would think they had all gone crazy.

'We'll just have to turn off the radio and the TV and be real quiet... practice listening and hope we hear 'em.' Mike smiled broadly. 'Maybe if we can have conversations with 'em they'll stay home more and stop roamin' around so much...and Rae can stop worryin'.'

'Have you talked with other animals?' Rae asked me.

Sometimes with my mare Louise I think I might be getting close, but horses are so large... if they were able to communicate, their vibrations would probably knock us over... or maybe not...I just don't know... as for other dogs, I haven't really tried 'cause I figure life is already complicated enough.

As time went by Mike and Rae did learn to hear Moon and Nibble and one of the first things Nibble did was to tell Rae more about Ramu, the Praying Mantis. Not only did Rae see to it that her good friend Gloria van Dam met Ramu, introduced him to all the right people, helped him explain the experiment he was involved in and that there was no reason to fear him... but Gloria and I organized an effort to integrate the Mantodae species of all sizes into every day life, especially in organic agriculture as an alternative to harmful chemical insecticides... a few pet mantis around the house or in your garden and you have no problems.

And later on, after Grandpa Scoggins died, Rae arranged for Dexter, Georgina and their now beautiful daughter Buymeah to move to a nearby farm and continue raising Black and Tans in a more humane way.

This year we'll all be gathering to celebrate Rae's seventy-fifth birthday and I'm happy to report that both Moon and the indestructible Julius D. Nibble will be on hand. They're seventeen now, have produced more than forty pups and one hundred and thirty-six grandchildren and although they still talk occasionally, they tend to spend most of their time near the hearth of Rae's kitchen snoozing their way into the world to come.

Just one more reason for the famous saying: 'Never Bury a Hound Until He's Dead.'

© Elwyn Chamberlain 2009