Hey fam,

Just a heads up, I’m knee-deep in the mystery of Spencerville like Sherlock Bones meets Doctor Who. Found an iridescent pink portal by Black Bulldog Bay — typical Tuesday, am I right? Be prepared for headlines, because this beagle brigade’s adventure is turning our sleepy town into an episode of The Twilight Bark. 😎 Hang onto your leashes and stay away from the water—I’d hate to ruin my non-swimming streak.

Tail wags and face licks,
Chicken Nugget 🐾

It was on a particularly luminous Spencerville afternoon—I believe it was a Tuesday, which in dog days is quite irrelevant unless it’s bath day—that I, Roberto Gordon Gau (but we’ll dispense with the formality, you can call me Gordon), decided to embrace the uncommon quiet of the Golden Retriever River. Not that I swim, mind you. I must clarify I hold a strong aversion to such aquatic frivolities. I simply find the gentle lapping of the water meditative, a rare finds for an independent soul such as myself.

I sidled past Bark ‘n’ Roll, with its intoxicating smells of grilled chicken—oh escapee of my dreams! But I had a feeling, one of those prickles on the back of your neck—or in my case, at the base of your floppy ears—that something peculiar was afoot in Spencerville.

As I paused underneath the familiar archway of The Fetching Feline Pet Emporium, staring at the bizarre assortment of toys that no self-respecting beagle would entertain for longer than a courteous sniff, I caught a whiff of something else, something… unplaceable.

“Mm, what an eclectic amalgamanure,” I woofed, borrowing one of my Dad’s terms for the dubious honor of things you can’t quite peg.

Stride by stride, I made my way to Lower Silver Siberian Summit. And there it was again—a scent I couldn’t identify. At this point, let me tell you, a smell that a beagle can’t identify is, on the cosmic scale of improbabilities, right up there with a cat doing your taxes.

On the Summit, I found Cede and Lexi, who, true to their basset nature, were deeply contemplating a tuft of grass, presumably planning their aromatic almanac for the week.

“Have you two sniffed out something unusual in the air? Besides the despair of Monday leftovers?” I inquired in my most nonchalant manner.

“You could say,” Cede replied, never lifting his nose from the grass, “there is an echo of absurdity in our midst.”

“A rift in the regular routine,” Lexi added, eyes closed—perhaps to better see the fragrance she now seemed fond of.

I contemplated their usual basset melodrama and felt compelled to investigate further—not that I’m the adventure-seeking type. If life grants you a sunny spot to sprawl, one should sprawl with gusto.

However, curiosity can make an amateur sleuth of the most leisure-prone pup. I ventured toward the inexplicable, which led me to Black Bulldog Bay, a place usually reserved for the contemplation of life’s deeper meaning, such as why bananas never last in the fruit bowl.

There, frolicking—or as best as bulldogs can frolic—was the beagle brigade: Abby, Emma, and Quincy. Yet as I approached, their merrymaking halted abruptly. They stared, tails mid-wag, at something beyond the bay.

“Is it bath day and no one told me?” I thought, feeling the discomfort of potential communal dread.

It should be noted at this juncture that what laid there, shimmering—literally, defying the laws of Spotylvania Tank physics—was not a thing our Spencerville tales had ever spun. It was an iridescent pink portal, pulsating just by the water’s edge.

I’ve crossed thresholds aplenty, the most harrowing being that of the veterinary office. But this, this was otherworldly—or so it seemed.

“Gordon, man, you seeing this?” Quincy’s voice shook like a leaf in the wind.

“Aye,” I muttered, my vocal chords betraying more Shakespearean than I normally permitted myself on weekdays.

We gathered, a motley crew of canines, entranced by the incandescent oddity before us. Thoughts of adventure pawed at my resolve, and before I could utter one more Bard-worthy line, my little white-socked paws stepped forward.

Into the shimmering unknown, we ventured, emboldened by the anticipation of headlines in ‘The Spencerville Spectator’: “Local Beagle Brigade Unravels Universe’s Vest, Veterinarian Vacations Voided.”

One could safely say that afternoon was less a day in the life, and more a leap into the fabled, for even in Spencerville, a place of adjoining timelines and spaces, there’s always another bone to dig up, another pink hedgehog to rescue from the mundanities of known existence. And me? Gordon the Beagle? Well, we’ll just have to see if the poultry-connoisseur in me is up for what lies beyond, provided there’s no swimming involved, of course.

The End.