Chapter 61: Things Farmers Do
Jake is at his office and has a conversation with Nick, while the raccoon is looking for something he had made for Judy.
"Jake, I thought you would want to be home with Marie and the babies?" Nick asked as he took a seat in his best friend's office. The chair was oversized for the fox and it had a dark and light blue plaid pattern fabric covering it. The stout oak desk, which was next to where the raccoon was standing, was devoid of everything but the cardboard box that he was digging into and his office phone. "They just came home from the hospital only a couple of days ago."
"He's trying to avoid changing diapers," Jimmy Ratzolli called out from the office next door, Nick had to smile at Jake's partner's comments. If anyone knew how to change diapers it was that rat for he had raised at least three dozen of his own children, that is when he wasn't in jail.
"I'm working!" the raccoon snapped back at the fox. "You did see my name on the front door when you came in, right? I am the Runnel, as in Runnel Security and so I have responsibilities!"
"Sure coon, only if you call drinking and dining with the city's rich and elite as being work!" Nick snickered as he gave his friend one of his infamous smirks.
"You've got to mingle if you want new business in this field. Reputation can't do everything, after all, no one has ever robbed one of our clients!" Jake replied.
"Ah, Le Rouge did," Nick reminded the raccoon.
"That doesn't count," Jake growled. "But I've been told that he won't try again."
"That's because he's in jail…wait, Jake what did you do?" Nick asked as he sat up in his chair and looked at the raccoon who was still digging in the box. He had pulled out a number of various odd parts and a few circuit boards.
"I didn't do anything and I had nothing to do with it," Jake answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "It just seems that he was boasting about his little indiscretion in jail too much and it didn't sit well with some of my friends. They took it on their own initiative to shut him up." The raccoon looked over at the fox and held his paw up. "Oh, he'll be fine in a few weeks. It's just for now he will be sipping his meals through a straw."
"You sure know a rough crowd, don't you?"
"Yeah, especially if you consider some of them are cops," the raccoon snickered. Then he found what he was looking for and grinned as he held it up in triumph.
"Is that a model of one of Stu's pick-up trucks? Nick asked in surprise.
"It's a scale model of the same truck Judy drove to the Big-Z that day you two cracked the Night Howlers case and arrested Bellwether, I had it made for her birthday." The truck looked like a miniature version of the beat-up old truck Judy had driven to town.
"Why?"
"One of our suppliers was boasting about his new 3-D printer and so I challenged him to make this model. Look, it even has the baling wire that Stu used to keep the license plate on the bumper!"
"Yeah, only a farmer would think of doing that," Nick chuckled. "You know that Stu amazes me sometimes, he can quote to you from memory the fertilizer rates, the quantity of seeds, along with the expected yield for each acre on the farm and yet he still forgets his and Bonnie's anniversary date."
"Huh? Well, he has a lot of farmland to keep up with."
"Last time I was in the truck with him, we had to stop several times and pick up all the stuff that flew out of the open windows for the air conditioning was broken and he never got it fixed. He's more concerned that the A/C works in the tractor and combine, but not so much in any of the trucks or cars he owns."
"The rabbit has his priorities," Jake grunted as he put the model truck down and then looked around the room in confusion.
"One of the scariest things about the Hopps family, besides being the only fox in their warren, is how a room full of talkative rabbits can go suddenly silent when the weather report comes on the news and then go back to being noisy when it's over."
"Weather is important…" the raccoon absentmindedly answered as he frowned at this desk.
"What's wrong?" Nick asked.
Jake held his paw up as he walked towards the open door. "Hey Karen!" he yelled towards the mouse sitting at her desk in front of Ratzolli's office.
"Jake, we do have an intercom," the petite secretary called back. "It's that button on your phone."
"Whatever," the raccoon scoffed. "Do you know where my laptop is at?"
"It is right where you left it two weeks ago, over in the lab," she answered.
"I thought your laptop was at your house?" Nick asked.
"That's my home computer," Jake answered. "My other one doesn't leave the building."
"That's why we put a tracker on it coon!" Ratzolli called out. "So you don't lose it or break it like you do all those phones that you go through."
"Thanks, Karen!" Jake called out, ignoring the rat's verbal jab.
The intercom buzzed on his desk phone, Nick reached over and pressed the button. "You're welcome boss," the mouse's voice came from the speaker.
"Oh look, it works!" the fox laughed.
The raccoon frowned at him, before he said, "Okay Nick, you can go back to complaining about your father-in-law."
"I wasn't complaining!" the fox protested. "I was…oh never mind!"
"Look, I fully understand what you are going through," Jake laughed. "I once had a two-minute conversation with Marie's dad before I realized that I was talking about a building's elevator and he was referring to a grain elevator."
"You're such a city coon!"
"Hey, you grew up three blocks from where I did!"
"It's odd we both married farmer's daughters?"
"Yeah and I better get home before mine puts me out to pasture," Jake laughed.
This story was inspired by an article written years ago by Doug Mayo, the Jackson County Extension Director.
