Read Owls in the Family for Free Online Page A

leading a pet skunk on a string. He had the middle of the parade all to himself, too. Nobody was crowding him!
    There were pet rabbits, ducks, chickens, geese, a couple of pigs, and a bunch of pedigree calves. There was even one little boy carrying a quart jar full of water, with a bunch of tadpoles swimming around in it.
    You’d expect lots of trouble, what with all the animals and the fact that it was a hot day and everybody was excited and there was so much noise. But there really wasn’t much trouble. There were dogfights, of course; and one dog, who wasn’t even in the parade at all, made a go for a cat in a baby carriage and that stampeded one of the goats. But some salesmen from the store were in the parade too, and they got things quieted down, though one of them got bitten on the leg, a little bit.
     

    It took about an hour for our outfit to get opposite the judges’ stand. There were five judges, some women and some men. The Mayor of Saskatoon was one of them.There were two Mounties beside the stand, dressed in their red coats. A lot of parents were jammed up against the stand too, so they could cheer if their kids won a prize.
    I’d had a good look at the parade by then, and there wasn’t an outfit that had a patch on ours. We were sure to win a good prize, and I figured it would be first prize. Wehad a little trouble though when we got to the stand, because Rex was so tired he just lay down and wouldn’t get up again. But that only made the judges laugh, and they came down from the stand to take a good look at our entry.

    I overheard one of the woman judges tell another woman that ours was the best rig she had seen, and “Isn’t it cute the way it’s decked out just like a real circus?” The first prize seemed to be right in our pockets, when the president of the T. Eaton Store, who was also one of the judges, saw the shoebox on top of the second wagon.
    “Hello,” he said. “Now here’s a good idea. Look at this, Sam! These boys have a special pet in reserve. That’s what I call smart merchandising!”
    Well, of course, everyone crowded around to see what the special pet was; and Bruce, with a silly smile on his dopey face, untied the box and lifted up the lid.
    What was in the box was—a rattlesnake.
     
    I guess you can imagine what happened next. All the people shoving and pushing to get away from us got the animals so upset that they began to stampede too. The skunk got crowded into a storefront, and that scared him, and he did what skunks always do when they get scared. There were calves and goats going every which way, and the dogs all went crazy and started chasing anything thatran—and that was everything there was. Our two cages got upset and squashed and all the gophers and white rats went skittering off under people’s feet. Wol climbed up on top of my head and kept beating his wings so I couldn’t see too much of what was happening, but I could still hear it. Women were screaming, and one of the Mounties had hauled out his big revolver and was waving it in the air, while the other one never stopped blowing his silver whistle. All you could hear was yells and howls and barks and screams and yowls. I tell you, there never had been anything like it in Saskatoon for a hundred years.
    We didn’t stick around any longer than we could help. We saved the wagons, our two dogs, the owls, and that darn snake. Bruce grabbed the shoebox the moment the ruckus started and stuck to it like a bur until we got back to my place.
    “Gee,” he said, as we were getting a drink from our garden hose. “If I’d lost that old snake I’d have got my britches tanned from here to Mexico. It belongs to our hired man, and it’s been his pet for fifteen years—ever since he was a cowboy down in the Cypress Hills. It’s so old it hasn’t any teeth, nor any poison either, but he sure is fond of it all the same. It sleeps right with him in his bunk….”
    I still think we should have won first