“Hey Dad, as wild as it gets in Spencerville! Aliens invaded. Not just any aliens, chicken-headed ones! Scary stuff but, their poultry phobia worked in our favor. Remember the squeaky toy, used it as Morse Code. And y’know Scout’s hatin’ on chicken? Turned savior with that – tricked aliens into believing we could feast on them. They hightailed outta here! So yeah, we saved the town – Scout now’s ‘Scout the Savior’. Tell everyone. -Scout & Insomniac Pug”

Listen to the story here

I know this might come as hard to swallow, like sour candy – Scout, the neighborhood’s hazel-eyed Labrador Retriever ambivalent about aqua-world, would be the savior of Spencerville when alien invaders would grip our peaceful doggy-town in their nefarious clutches. Sounds bonkers, right? But walk with me, I’ll guide you through this rather peculiar tale.

One evening, as Scout and I were warming our bellies in front of a crackling fireplace – he was savoring a hearty beef stew while I slurped gravy from a porcelain bowl – we observed illuminating dots emerging through our drowsy fog of fire-lit coziness. The hazy gloom steadily transformed into glaring fluorescence as though Red Beagle Beach had ventured into our snug living room. The transformation was abrupt, disconcerting. The water he loathed had come to him; but this was no torrential terror nor pool of peril. This was…invasion by extraterrestrial beings.

The alien directive wasn’t immediately apparent. Bullish figures emerged from the shimmering haziness; heads resembled chickens – a poultry paradox in my beef-lover friends’ world. Spencerville, where pets led human-like existences engulfed with laughter, play, and an endless supply of Pooched Potatoes was under siege from beings Scout would, under normal circumstances, choose never to ingest.

There was an unspoken understanding that either we adapt, or perish. Suddenly, Scout’s red squeaky chew-toy didn’t seem such a trivial plaything. Its ever-present squeak became our language – our Morse Code. I, a Pug with insomnia, and Scout, a Labrador with a paradoxical love-hate relationship with chicken, were forced into an impromptu version of earth’s furry saviors.

First on our agenda was to visit Lucy, the town’s philosophy wizard beagle. We barked our way across Bulldog Bay, triggering pots of now unwanted Furrific Fried Chicken. The unsettling crunch of bones echoed my thoughts – was this chicken-backlash a piece of fate’s ironic humor?

“Here’s what you do,” Lucy imparted, barely finishing chewing her mouthful of Pooched Potatoes, “Become the canine they never want to eat.”

With that piece of brutally honest wisdom, Scout transformed his abhorrence into our greatest defense, making these intergalactic chicken-looking chaps question their decision to invade a canine kingdom. We darted through Spencerville, squeaking our message of insurmountable resilience. As the aliens approached, Scout would put on his grandest performance, making show of licking his lips and acting predator-starved.

What happened next, while predictable now, was bewildering then. With every squeak that echoed in the Spencerville night, every droplet of courage squeezed from Scout’s ravenous acting, those chicken-headed figures slinked back into their luminescent vessel. As quickly as they’d arrived, they vanished into the abyss, leaving Scout and me on the shores of Red Beagle Beach.

And just like that, Spencerville was ours again – a haven for pets who dared dream. That night, as we soaked in the quiet harmony of a saved world, Scout, this oddball Labrador who viewed water as disaster and chicken as forbidden fruit, wasn’t just an adventure-loving companion. He was ‘Scout the Savior’, a fur-covered hero who protected his realm of Chihuahua Castle with the courage of a hundred hounds.

The End.