Read The Case of the Fiddle Playing Fox for Free Online

tend to respond to every little sound. And after doing that for a couple of hours, something happens to your state of readiness and alertness.
    For one thing, you begin to feel drowsy. Sleepy. Stuporous. Comatose. Even if you’ve had a nice long nap.
    It must have been sometime past midnight when I realized that I was in danger of falling asleep. One of the things you can do to stay awake on a stakeout is talk to your partner. I decided to give it a shot.
    â€œDrover, it’s time to check in. Have you seen any zzzzzzz . . . ?”
    â€œNo thanks, I couldn’t hold another bite zzzzzzzzz .”
    â€œUh, Roger, did you zzzzzzz get a count on ’em?”
    â€œThree green elephants dancing with a . . . zzzzzz .”
    â€œCome back on that one, Roger, we didn’t have a good . . . zzzzzz. ”
    â€œOh yeah, I’ve been wide asleep for . . . steak bones.”
    â€œRight. Well, I’m having a little troub . . . Beulah, you shouldn’t be here at this hour of the . . . having a little trouble staying . . . asleep my zzzzzzzzz elf. How about you?”
    â€œOh sure, I’ll take all three . . . snort zzzzzz .”
    â€œCheck and double zzzzz . . . got to stay asleep, no matter how hard it . . . zzzzzzz .”
    â€œFiddle music.”
    â€œYou bet. And the fiddler it is, the musicker I like it.”
    â€œPete, I hear fiddle . . . fiddle-faddle . . . fiddle music.”
    â€œDon’t be obserd, Droving. Pete can’t play a . . . what did you say?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œJust now. Someone was talking about Pete.”
    â€œNo, that must have been . . . fiddle music.”
    â€œYou keep talking about . . . fiddle musle . . . zzzzz .”
    I keep hearing . . . middle fusic . . . and steak bones.”
    â€œIt’s just the crickles, Droving. Crickets.”
    â€œDo crickles play . . . fickle music?”
    â€œRoger, a big ten-four on the crickles.”
    Crickle? Fickle? Fiddle?
    HUH?
    Fiddle! Hey, unless my ears were deceiving me, I was hearing FIDDLE MUSIC! But that was impossible. Nobody on my ranch played the . . . nobody on my ranch had ever played the . . .
    I sat up and gave my head a shake. Just for a second there, I must have dozed off for a second or two. Not long, just a momentary lapse of a split second or two, but long enough to . . .
    Drover was dead asleep, the little dunce, sleeping on the job, sleeping through a very important stakeout, and I had a good mind to . . .
    That WAS fiddle music, and I wasn’t dreaming it. Not that I had been asleep, you understand, or that I might have been dreaming about anything at all, but on the other hand . . .
    I took my ears off Automatic Liftup and switched over to manual. I raised them to the Full Alert position, trimmed them out to Max G (that’s our shorthand term for “Maximum Gather­ing Mode,” don’t you see), and homed in on the alleged sound frequency.
    Fiddle music. No question about it. I could hear it as plain as day, but still my mind refused to accept it as real. And yet . . . I had picked it up on Max G, so it had to be the real thing.
    Very carefully, I threaded my nose through the weeds in front of me, pushing them aside so as to give myself a clear and unobsconded view of the chicken house. Everything appeared to be normal, but then . . .
    HOLY SMOKES!!
    My tail stuck straight out and the hair on my back shot straight up and my ears jumped three inches and cold chills went rolling down my backbone.
    I blinked my eyes, trying to convince them that they had malfunctioned. No luck there. Hence, after running checks and double-checks on all my sensory equipment, I still saw . . . a fox playing a fiddle, and strolling towards the chicken house .
    I saw it, fellers, and I heard it, but I still didn’t believe it. I had a peculiar reaction to this situation. I turned away and looked the other direction, hoping to give my racing mind a chance to catch up with . . .