Til Emerson was not happy. Nothing had worked out the way it was supposed to. The pig was supposed to be his meal ticket, his golden goose. Is it so wrong to believe in miracles? He thought miserably. Is it impossible that your hope could be rewarded?
"You're worthless, you know that? Worthless!" Til barked drunkenly at the silent pink pig. "You choke so hard. What gives? Why are you holding out on me?" The pig simply blinked at him, eyelashes batting. "You know how impressed everyone would have been? Why you gotta be like that? Why you gotta play me like that? I shoulda sold you to a rendering plant, you useless hunk of pork. You've ruined me. You hear me? This is the end." He placed his handgun against his temple. "I hope you starve here."
"How does it feel to be home, baby?" Dean asked his car idly.
"I always find Detroit kinda depressing," said Sam as he got out. "I mean, once upon a time it was a boom town and now…"
"Now it's the financial asscrack of America. No wonder people are offing themselves. But stay positive. You're bumming out the Impala."
In the diner, Sam slid his remaining onion rings over to his brother. "What made you think these suicides are a case?"
"One of the vic's families gave me a call – word of mouth, I guess. Says that her dad went nuts, blew all his money, blamed a pet pig, then blew his brains out."
"He blamed what on the pet pig?"
"His bankruptcy. He broke the bank trying to enter the pig in a state shepherding competition."
"You're kidding." Dean shook his head, mouth full of burger. "So we're looking for an evil Babe?" asked Sam.
"Seems that way. But how many people keep pigs as pets in Michigan? Should be pretty easy to find."
"Let's see if local PD knows which Humane Society is holding the animal."
"Suicide by pig, eh?" said detective Dave Tanaka. "Usually people do that by ODing on bacon and pork rinds. But I really don't have much to tell you. Our plates are always pretty full with all the other violent crimes, so we're always happy for some help from the FBI, but honestly, this doesn't look like anything besides your average, run-of-the-mill suicide. They're really not news around here, sad as that sounds."
"Who was the officer overseeing forensics?" asked Sam.
"That would be Vernon Wingardt, but he's on medical leave at the moment."
"Medical leave?" asked Dean.
"Hey the stress can get to anyone," explained Tanaka. "And it looks like that new pooch of his didn't do much to raise his spirits."
"Can we have a word with him?" asked Dean.
"Why don't you speak to his partner? Barrett's been riding with me for the last week. I'm sure she'd jump at a break from her accident report."
"Hah! Medical leave, right." said Louise Barrett. She was listening to hip-hop quietly at her desk while she filled out forms. "I would have written 'mental fatigue' leave right on the report if I thought it could get past IA like that."
"What happened?" asked Sam.
"Vern went nuts," replied Barrett without raising her eyes from her paperwork.
"Would you please elaborate?" asked Dean.
"He started bringing his Great Dane to work. Not just to the station; to crime scenes."
"And this station doesn't have a K9 unit?" asked Sam.
"Nope. Doesn't have a mounted unit either. Damn dog was massive. Poor Vern. I mean, my cat can kind of tell when I'm about to get home, but let's be realistic. The guy would walk his dog around, all "come on boy, sniff out some clues". As if his dog could solve mysteries."
Dean's eyes widened and he looked at Sam. "Tanaka mentioned that the dog was recently adopted. Where, might I ask, did Wingardt get his miracle mutt?"
"I don't know," replied Barrett "I don't think he got him legally. Tanaka tried to get it out of him, but every time he asked, Shaggy got all squirrelly. Which was a dick thing to do to Tanaka since he's been looking for a puppy for his kid for, like, a month."
"Wait," said Dean, "what did you just call your partner?"
Barrett smiled. "Ruh-roh. Vern stopped shaving for a while there and the nickname just kinda stuck. What a shame too. Sh- Vern was on a real hot streak. The last few cases he closed were complete slam dunks. I was almost starting to believe in the magic dog."
Sam and Dean walked out to the car. "It's the same creature, right?" said Dean. "I mean, it's the same MO we're talking about here." He opened a nearby newspaper box and took one.
"I guess. At least Wingardt hasn't killed himself."
"Yet," said Dean as he got into the car. He flipped the paper open to the restaurant listings. "What do you want to do for lunch? Let's try something new. This town needs all the greenbacks it can get." He looked at the paper and something caught his eye. "Son of a bitch."
"What?" asked Sam, craning his neck.
Dean pointed to an ad touting the grand opening of a French bistro on Conner street. It was called "Le Rat Génie", and the logo was a smiling rodent in a chef's toque.
The brothers pulled up to a strip of severely struggling businesses. One in five was having a liquidation sale, and one in seven was boarded up. The windows of "Le Rat Génie" were dark, newspapered over and broken in places. Sam and Dean went into the furniture store next door.
"What happened to your neighbour, the French restaurant?" asked Sam.
The clerk shrugged. "What happened to everything else in the strip? It shut down, not enough capital. It's really hard to make a go of it as a restaurant, and I don't think Eugene really had his head together."
"So you knew him. Does he still live in the apartment upstairs?" asked Dean.
"Actually, he spends most of his time across the street in the park."
"He's homeless?"
"Yeah, he sunk everything he had into The Rat and after it went under, his wife left and all."
The Winchester brothers found Eugene Belcher sitting on a bench in Chandler Park. He was a middle-aged, paunchy man with a moustache, whose stooped shoulders shrugged and hugged his trench coat against the cold. Beside him on the bench were a tiny wooden spoon and a miniature chef's toque. He glanced up at the brothers, then back to the spot in thin air he'd been contemplating.
"Sir, can we talk about your restaurant?" asked Sam as he took a seat beside Gene on the bench.
"What's to say?" Gene answered, not making eye contact. "I tried, I failed, blood from a stone and all that." He shook his head, muttering. "Yes, I know rats can't cook. That's become very clear to me."
"The rat was your chef?" asked Dean.
"God, it sounds so stupid when you say it out loud," replied Gene, looking miserably at his shoes.
"Starting a restaurant is a huge undertaking," said Sam. "Why take such a gamble on a rat?"
"Because he was really good!" blurted the homeless man. "He once made me a risotto so creamy, you'd swear that…" Eugene looked at Dean, stopped what he was saying and crossed his arms again. "Doesn't matter, rats can't cook. Ridiculous."
"Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that rats could cook." began Dean. "Besides the logistical problems of having a one-pound animal directing a kitchen staff, why wouldn't your bistro work?"
"Turns out he'll only cook for me. One time I had leftovers and my daughter got to taste it. She can vouch for what a talent the rat is! I thought I could maybe pass off his cooking as my own, but somehow he got wise to my operation. If it's not for mw, the rat produces nothing." He bent down and yelled at the bench. "That might have been helpful to know before I applied for the small business loan!"
A small rat with bluish grey fur jumped onto the bench and walked in a circle, sniffing the toque. Sam leapt to his feet.
"Is that him?" asked Dean.
Eugene nodded, wordlessly pointing beside him with a hooked finger.
"Mind if we take him off your hands?" Dean was replied by a bunch of dismissive scoffs as Gene waved the rat away. "It's all you, Sammy," said Dean genially, shoving his brother toward the bench. Sam sneered at Dean as he gingerly picked up the rodent. The rat didn't struggle in the least.
"I hope your luck turns around, pal." Dean handed Eugene a $20 bill and turned to follow Sam to the car. Gene grunted insistently, seized the rat-sized kitchenware and thrust them into Dean's hand. Only then did he wave him away and return to his sulking.
At the motel, Sam did research on the computer as Dean contemplated the rat in the cage. He fed him a French fry and asked his brother, "Do you think Eugene bought this stuff for the rat, or it did it just come with him? Where do you even find a spoon so small?"
Sam smiled and picked up his beer. "I think what we're hunting here is a tanuki."
"I thought that was just a costume that Super Mario wears." Dean walked over to join at the laptop. "What's a tanuki?"
"It's a mischievous Japanese shapeshifter. It usually takes the form of an animal… or a teakettle? They appear in kabuki theatre and like to cause trouble."
"And what, they feed on failure?" asked Dean.
"It doesn't say. It mentions that they're not so much evil as annoying. They've been known to transform into people in order to trick their lovers."
"Does it say anything about them being talented? Or hiding a talent from their victims?"
"No…" said Sam hesitantly. "I wonder if it's an imp or something. A pixie?" Dean walked around the room throwing his keys from hand to hand. "What kind of creature feeds on failure?"
Dean stopped abruptly. "I know what it is."
"What is it?"
"Gimme the chair," he replied as he sat in front of Sam's laptop and opened YouTube in a new tab. In a thick Austrian accent he added "it's not a tanuki." Dean selected a video and turned the computer toward Sam.
It was playing a Warner Brothers' cartoon – One Froggy Evening.
"What are we looking at, Dean?"
Dean shushed his brother and pointed at the screen as the cartoon frog leapt out of his metal box and broke into song and dance.
"No," said Sam.
"Yes."
"Dude, Michigan Frogs don't exist."
"Neither do vampires or Windigos or tanukis. Watch, this is exactly what the dog, the rat and the pig all did to their victims. Same damned thing. Look, that guy even looks like the guy we talked to in the park."
"This is stupid, Dean. The Michigan Frog only ever appears as a frog. If we're going to count this cartoon as lore... then…" Sam glanced at the caged rat and trailed off.
The cage now contained a perfectly ordinary green bullfrog. The toque and spoon were replaced by a cane and a miniature top hat. The frog looked at the brothers sleepily and let out a languid ribbit. "Blurrrupppp."
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. "You watch altogether too many cartoons."
"Was I right or was I right?"
"You win. How do we kill it?"
Dean grimaced. "I think it's immortal. In the cartoon, nobody kills it. They just wall it up in a building and it survives for centuries without dying. I don't suppose there's a construction site nearby, is there?"
"Maybe we shouldn't."
"Shouldn't kill it? We can't."
"No, maybe we shouldn't try to get rid of it."
"What are you talking about?" asked Dean. "This thing has been destroying people's lives."
"That wasn't the frog's fault. Watch the cartoon. The frog's not evil; it's talented. Moustache destroys his own life trying to exploit the frog. That's what happened to everyone here with a talented animal too. I'm starting to feel bad for the Michigan frog, actually." Sam looked back at the cage, which now contained a 5-month old Golden Retriever puppy. Sam couldn't help himself. "Awwwwww." He said.
Dean scowled at his brother. "You weak bastard," he said, watching Sam open the cage and pick up the puppy. "That's a monster, you know. Right now, you're cuddling a monster."
Sam pointed the puppy at Dean. "Go ahead and gank him then." He scratched behind the puppy's ear. "Hey, wasn't there someone who wanted a dog?"
The Impala pulled up to Dave Tanaka's house. Dean knocked on the door as Sam corralled the retriever up the porch on a leash.
Tanaka answered. "Agent Anselmo, what can I do for you?"
"Officer Barrett mentioned that you were looking to adopt a puppy, and we happened to find one that needs a home. Are you still in the market?"
"Animal Services gave him a clean bill of health," Sam added.
"Wow, really? Thank you so much. Where did you get him?"
"We found him," answered Sam quickly.
"On a construction site," chimed in Dean.
Tanaka leaned forward and stroked the puppy's chin. "Growing up, my family always had a dog, and I've been meaning to get one for this house for ages."
"Well this one's all yours, if you want it." Dean stepped back.
"A quick word about this dog, though," interjected Sam. "If he, by any chance, turns out to be really, really good at fetch, please just let it go. Don't try to enrol him in soccer, or basketball, or football or anything."
"Don't audition him for commercials," added Dean.
"Right. No matter how athletic he is, just treat him like your dog. Because that's what he is. Love him and take care of him."
"Oh…. kay," replied Tanaka, taking the leash from Sam. "That's a strange bit of advice."
"A puppy!" squealed a seven year old girl who ran over and crouched to pet him. "For me?"
"He's all yours, Jenny," said the detective.
"What's his name?" asked Jenny.
Before Tanaka could tell her that she could choose his name, the Winchesters replied in unison:
"Buddy."
CHEAT SHEET:
The sheep-herding pig: Babe (from the movie Babe)
The crime-solving dog: Scooby-Doo (from the Hanna-Barbera cartoons)
The culinary rodent: Remy (from Pixar's Ratatouille)
The golden retriever that may or may not be an athlete: Buddy (from any of the Air Bud movies)