It was a little past midnight. The wind was howling. The house was creaking. Mom was lying awake, as usual. As she listened to the roar outside, she thought she heard a rustling noise in the hallway. She strained to listened. What could it be? After a few moments, she heard it again. Quietly Mom got out of bed, and crept to the door in the dark. After all, the noise could be nothing. She didn’t want to needlessly wake Dad from his deep slumber. Or disturb Asa and myself, who were down the hall in our room.
Cautiously she opened the door. Instantly Mom felt a sharp pain in her left shin bone just below the knee! As she instinctively lifted her leg to grasp it in pain, Mom felt the brush of what seemed like fur against her hand. Fumbling for the light switch, she turned it on just in time to see a fluffy tail disappearing around the corner.
In hot pursuit, Mom took off down the hall, ignoring the pain in her throbbing shin bone. As suspected, the guest room door was open. Mom burst in, and turned on the light while shouting, “Aha! Caught You!” But to her bewildered amusement, she did not catch us misbehaving. Instead, she saw me blinking at her groggily, wondering what all the fuss was about, and Asa nestled on his bed sleeping. Or at least that’s what he wanted her to think.
Asa’s poker face is not very good. Besides, Mom knows whenever she enters a room, his usual response, no matter how sound asleep he was seconds ago, is to jump up and greet her. Therefore, his attempt to pretend to not be surprised led Mom to instantly know that he was the hit and run that collided into her now bruised and swelling leg.
It all made sense. Asa was probably about to use his head as a battering ram to open her bedroom door, just as she was opening it. Something he does to most doors standing in his way. What didn’t make sense to Mom was how did Asa manage to open his bedroom door to get out? She swore she closed it after tucking us in our dog beds a few hours earlier.
Mom turned off the light. She climbed onto the bed in our room. Asa jumped up, landing on her injured leg, of course. As he nestled down to go back to sleep, Mom was lying awake again. Only this time she had something to think about while listening to the wind outside, how did Asa get out of the room? Sorry Mom, I was off-duty last night. This is one mystery you’re going to have to solve on your own.
