Magic on Changeling Mountain

The phone was ringing in the house as they joined the others but Donna got to it first. It was Cindy Pence. She needed to speak to Carolyn. There was an emergency and Carolyn was needed at the clinic. “I’ll send Ray to get Carolyn.” Angela told Cindy and then hung up.

She walked to the entrance of the living room and started to motion to Ray when she heard someone step on the squeaky board on the front porch and Carolyn opened the front door. Angela rushed to her daughter and wrapped her in a tight hug.

“Oh, Carolyn. I’m so glad to see you. I was getting so worried. I wish I didn’t have to send you off again so fast but Cindy just called. There is an emergency down at the clinic and she needs you to get there as fast as you can.”

“Well the fastest way is to go as a cat. She didn’t give you any idea of what’s going on?” Carolyn asked.

“No, just that it was an emergency.” Angela replied. “Go and take care of that but hurry back.”

Carolyn left the house again and transformed as she jumped off the porch. Angela watched her run across the yard and into the woods. She was going to take the most direct route down to her clinic which was a well-used path through the woods.

Carolyn ran as fast as possible and arrived at the clinic in less than a quarter of an hour, stopping well within the woods to transform before walking across to the clinic and entering through the side door, to find Cindy with her hands full. Mrs. Clancy was there with Clementine, who was obviously in a great deal of pain as she laid on her side, whimpering. Her stomach was swollen and distended. Also, Mrs. Ramsay, who was Mrs. Clancy’s neighbor, was there with her dog who was also sick with a swollen distended stomach.

“What in the world is going on? How is it that two people who live right next to each other have both of their dogs come down with the same thing at the same time? What have you ladies been feeding them?” Carolyn said as she pulled on her white clinic coat.

“I haven’t given her anything but the food that you sold me the last time I was here. They were having a play day and disappeared from our sight for just a few moments and when they came back, they were sick. Poor Clementine threw up the most putrid smelling green goop on the back seat of my car. I doubt if it will ever come out of the upholstery.”

“Let me go look at it. There may be something in it that will tell me what it was they got into then.” Carolyn said.

“I’ve already collected a sample. I was just going to put it under the microscope.” Cindy said.

“Very good. Let me have a look and then we will go from there.” Carolyn said. She went into the room where Cindy had the microscope all set up and the smell hit her the minute she opened the door. “Good lord, what is that smell?”

“I should have put the cap back on the bottle. You should smell Mrs. Clancy’s car. She’ll never be able to drive it again if she can’t get rid of that smell.”

They looked at the slide that Cindy had prepared and Carolyn held her breath as she opened the bottle and poured some into a petri dish. She spread it out with a tongue depressor, trying to see if there was anything solid in it. She wasn’t sure but she suspected it was antifreeze mixed with something else. It had a green color to it but was thick like lotion and the smell was not to be believed.

“It’s almost like a slime, like slugs leave on the ground when they pass but I’ve never smelled slug slime that smelled this bad. Plus to have left back this much slime, it would have to be a slug as big as a barn.” Carolyn instructed Cindy on several chemical tests she wanted her to run and then she went back out to Mrs. Clancy and Mrs. Ramsay, hoping to get more information.

“Where were the dogs when they disappeared? Have you been having problems with slugs in your yard lately? Or toads maybe?

“No, not any more so than usual. It’s starting to get cold at night so they’ve pretty much gone into hiding.”

“I need to see where they were and hopefully find what it was they ate. I’m hoping they left some behind of whatever it was. Can one of you show me where the dogs were right before they got sick?”

Mrs. Ramsay said she would take Carolyn over to her back yard, where the dogs had been having such a good time on their play day. Mrs. Ramsay chattered away as they drove over to her house, about how she and Mrs. Clancy had been having tea on her porch while they watched the dogs run and play together.

They liked to imagine themselves as grand old southern bells and would have tea and cookies almost daily. Mrs. Ramsay was better than Mrs. Clancy about not feeding her dog people food but she was still guilty of giving her dog, Kimi, cookies and bits of pastry. The dog, an Akita, was only fluffy because she was overweight. The dog would eat just about anything you put down in front of it.

Carolyn walked down to the bottom of the yard and her nose led her to a dead raccoon, not far from a small puddle of the green slime. The raccoon looked to have been dead for several days as it was partially decayed. She could tell that the animal had been consuming the greenish slime as well and had died from it.

She didn’t know what was in the slime but she was going to find out. She walked back up to the Ramsay’s house and asked Mrs. Ramsay for a shovel and a bucket. “There’s a puddle of that green slimy stuff down there as well as a dead raccoon. I want to remove the puddle and bury the raccoon.”

Mrs. Ramsay helped her find a shovel and bucket in the gardening shed and then she went into the house to wait.

Carolyn walked back to where the dead raccoon was laying on the ground and dug a hole large enough to bury the raccoon and several mice that she found lying around the green puddle. She covered the hole and then scooped up all of the green goo. It smelled awful and Carolyn thought “I’m going to have to send this stuff off for analysis. I don’t have the right equipment to break down everything that’s in this. I just pray someone is not planting this as poison. But if not, where did it come from?” Carolyn left the bucket sitting next to the bush as she went to rinse the shovel and return it to the garden shed. She kept an eye on the bucket as she walked over to the back door and knocked. Mrs. Ramsay immediately came out and asked her to come in.

“Come inside and have some tea, dear.” Mrs. Ramsay said, as she held the door open for her.

“No, thanks but I want to get back to the clinic and take care of the dogs. I think I’m going to have this stuff sent off to the city for analysis. I don’t have a clue as to what’s in it, which is going to make it hard for me to treat the dogs but I’ll do what I can.

Please warn your neighbors with pets to keep a close eye on them and to check their yards. I’m also going to let the sheriff know to pass the word around town. If someone is laying this out as poison, I want to hopefully catch the criminal and keep anymore animals or worse yet, any small children from getting sick.”

Carolyn told her as she waved to Mrs. Ramsay and walked quickly back to the bucket. She picked it up and walked quickly back to the clinic. As she opened the door, Mrs. Clancy was beside herself. Carolyn could hear the two dogs howling, as if in pain.

“Oh Dr. Masters, please do something. My poor baby is suffering so much.” Mrs. Clancy said. “Good lord, what is that stench?” Mrs. Clancy quickly covered her nose and mouth with the hanky she always seemed to have in her hand.

“It’s the poison that your dog ate. Please wait here, Mrs. Clancy and I’ll see to Clementine.” Carolyn said as she carried the bucket back to the lab. She found Cindy looking through the microscope at the sample she had scraped off the back seat of Mrs. Clancy’s car.

“I can’t make out what it is either. The green color suggests antifreeze but antifreeze is not this thick or slimy. It’s almost like it’s mixed with petroleum jelly, but neither of them would be making the dogs sick like this. I wish we had a chromatography machine. We could figure out what it is that is making them sick and then we would know how to treat them.” Carolyn told her assistant. “How are the dogs doing?”

“They are still throwing up and I’m afraid to say that the last time I checked Clementine, she was beginning to show blood in her vomit.” Cindy told her.

“I’d better check on them. I hope we don’t have to put them down.” Carolyn said as she grabbed a book off the shelf above Cindy’s head. She flipped through the pages as she walked back to where the two dogs were laying on the floor, howling and throwing up.

Cindy had been right. Clementine did indeed have evidence of blood in her vomit but Carolyn suspected it was because her throat was becoming raw from vomiting. Her examining room smelled awful and she grabbed a hand towel off the shelf and tied it around the lower part of her face. It didn’t completely block the smell but at least the towels had a fresh clean smell that cut down the stench somewhat.

Carolyn checked the dogs and then went back to the book. She tried to find something that would give her a clue as to how to treat them but nothing in the book listed anything that sounded like what she was dealing with.

She decided to call the poison control center number that was listed in the cover of the book. She described the systems and the green goo to the person on the phone and they said that without a chemical analysis of what the goo contained, they couldn’t really give her any idea of how to treat the dogs other than to pump their stomachs. The person asked if she could send in a sample of the goo for them to analyze and she said she would Fedex a sample as soon as possible.

She called Cindy to come help her as she began to prepare to pump the dogs’ stomachs. Treating the dogs was her number one priority. As soon as they had the dogs taken care of she would arrange to send the sample off to the poison control center.

Carolyn instructed Cindy on what she was going to do and between the two of them, it wasn’t long before they had the two dogs sedated and then they pumped their stomachs. Both dogs couldn’t have eaten very much of the green goo but they had been being fed more table food. Carolyn could tell from the contents that came up.

That made her so angry that she was prepared to tell both Mrs. Clancy and Mrs. Ramsey that she was going to remove the dogs from their homes if they did not follow her instructions from now on as they were endangering their pets’ lives.

As soon as the dogs stopped throwing up and calmed down to where they were only occasionally whimpering, she told Cindy to get a good sample prepared in a sterile container and get it ready for Fedex to pick up. Then she went to talk to Mrs. Clancy.

“Mrs. Clancy, this is the last time I’m going to tell you. NO MORE TABLE FOOD for Clementine! If I find out you’ve fed her another bite of table food, I’m going to remove her from your home.” Carolyn told the woman. “You are slowly killing that beautiful dog.”

Mrs. Clancy became indignant and red in the face. “How dare you threaten to take my dog away from me! You have no right!” She began to bluster.

“I have every right as a doctor to protect my patient from further harm. I would do the same thing if someone brought an abused child in here. What do I need to do to make you understand that processed human food is not for animal consumption? You might as well have fed her that poison on a spoon. It is killing her all the same. She had bits of doughnuts and what looked like chocolate chips in her stomach. Chocolate is deadly to dogs. What does it take to make you understand that?”

“But she loves it and begs whenever we are having dessert.” Mrs. Clancy began to wilt under Carolyn’s stern demeanor.

“But you are a thinking human being. You must realize that giving her those treats is killing her. When you have dessert, put a few doggie treats on the table next to your plate and feed them to her, not food from your plate. She gets to have a treat that is not harmful to her but you have to control her portions or she’s going to eat her way into an early grave IF she manages to survive this.

I still don’t know what is in the poison she ate but I’m going to Fedex a sample to the poison control lab and see if they can tell me what’s in it. In the meantime, we have pumped their stomachs and sedated them so that they are not in so much pain. They are going to have to stay here until I can get the results back and hopefully the poison control people will be able to tell me how to treat this.”

“You are going to be able to save them aren’t you?”

Mrs. Ramsey came back just then and Carolyn explained to her what she had just told Mrs. Clancy and while Mrs. Clancy had been angry, Mrs. Ramsey just began to cry.

“Look, I need to get back in there and see how they are doing. Why don’t you ladies go home and I’ll call you if there is any change. There is going to be someone with them 24 hours a day until we figure out what is going on and how to treat it, if there is a way to treat it.

I do want to prepare you for the possibility that we might have to put them down. This chemical may have burned the lining of their stomachs. If that is the case, they won’t be eating anything and I will not sit here and watch them slowly starve to death.”

Cindy came into the lobby with the Fedex package and told Carolyn “I called Fedex and explained that this was an emergency and they said they would send someone right up to pick it up.”

“Good. How are the dogs doing?” Carolyn asked.

“They seem to be resting now but I think that’s because of the sedative.” Cindy told her.

“Well, you had better call home and let your folks know I’m going to need you to stay here and help me tonight. I need to call up to my parents’ house and let them know I’m going to be here all night as well.

There’s all kinds of stuff happening up there right now and I wish I could go back up there but these dogs need me right now. I hope my mom can bring us something to eat. I’m tired of pizza.” Carolyn said as she watched Mrs. Clancy and Mrs. Ramsay walk slowly back to their cars, arm in arm.

Cindy called home and told her mom that she was going to be staying at the clinic and asked if someone could bring her a change of clothes. She had gotten dog vomit on the pants she had on and the smell was making her sick to her stomach.

As soon as she hung up, Carolyn called up to her parents’ house and explained what had happened and asked if someone could bring them something to eat and to stop at her house and get her a change of clothes as well.

It wasn’t long before Cindy’s brother, Ralph showed up with a change of clothes for Cindy and he brought them something to eat and drink as well. He hung out for a little while and Cindy and Carolyn told him to pass it around to his towner friends that they needed to keep an eye on their pets and keep their noses open for anything that smelled bad in their yards.

“Do you think someone purposely put that stuff down for the dogs to eat?” Ralph asked.

“Sure looks like it. The puddle I dug up didn’t look like it was there by accident and it’s not like someone emptied their radiator and just dumped it under that bush. Besides, antifreeze might have made them slightly sick but it wouldn’t make them act like this. There was also a dead raccoon and some dead mice near it too, so there is something deadly mixed in with it.”

“I can’t think of anyone in town that would do such a thing.” Ralph said. He was the same age as Carolyn and the oldest of Cindy’s siblings. Being that he was a male, he had been allowed more freedom than Cindy and her sisters.

Ralph had been active in sports all throughout high school, had joined the army when he graduated and now he worked part time at the hardware store in town, when he was not working on his family’s farm. The army had changed him though. He wasn’t the rowdy teenager that Carolyn remembered from school but he was more mature and down to earth now.

“Oh by the way, Ivan told me that he’s going to be building some new kennels for you. Tell him to come see me when he needs supplies and I’ll get you my employee discount at the hardware store.” Ralph said before he left.

“Thanks, Ralph. That would be much appreciated.” Carolyn told him.

As Ralph was leaving, Daniel showed up carrying a bundle of clothes for her and a large bowl of food. “What’s going on down here?” He asked as he passed her the bundle. “Hi, Cindy. Are you staying the night with her?”

“Hi and yes sir!” Cindy replied.

“Someone dumped some poison on Mrs. Ramsey’s property and her dog and Mrs. Clancy’s dog got into it, not to mention a raccoon and some mice. Killed the smaller animals immediately and we’re watching the dogs closely. We’ve pumped their stomachs and sedated them so they are in as little pain as possible.

I’m sending samples of the poison off to be tested for what it contains and once I have the results back, I’ll know how to treat them. Hopefully, we can keep them alive long enough to get the results back.”

As she said that, the Fedex driver showed up. Carolyn gave him the package and told him “It’s critical that I get this to the poison control center as quickly as possible.”

“I’m going directly to the airport with this and we can deliver the same day.” The driver told her.

“Great. Perhaps we can have the results back tonight or early in the morning.” Cindy said.

The driver left and Daniel said “Well, I’d better get back to the house. We found a cave high up on the mountain for the centaurs to live in but they can’t move the one that just gave birth just yet. She’s still very weak and the foal won’t be able to walk that distance until it’s at least a few days old. Damien keeps insisting that there is a storm coming.”

“Sure couldn’t tell it by the weather today. It’s been a beautiful day, except that someone is trying to poison animals. Dad, we need to put out the word that if anyone finds any of this stuff in the woods, they are to let me know immediately.

Tell them not to touch it but to cover it as well as they can but mark the spot so that I can find and remove it. I might go for a run later and make sure there is nothing in the immediate area.” Carolyn told her father.

“What does it look and smell like?” Daniel asked.

“Cindy, can you bring me that bucket please?” Carolyn asked.

Cindy brought the bucket over and set it down and quickly stepped away, covering her mouth and pinching her nose as Carolyn pinched her nose and uncovered the bucket.

“Good lord!” Daniel muttered as the stench hit him. He quickly peeked into the bucket but didn’t get too close. “I’m sure that won’t be hard to find in the forest and I know I’ve not smelled anything like it and I’ve covered a lot of territory today.”

“Well, I’m fairly sure it was not put in her yard by accident, so we need to keep an eye out. Hopefully the poison control center will be able to tell me how to treat the dogs and we can save them.” Carolyn told him.

“Well, good luck, baby cakes. I’d better get going or your mother will begin to worry.” Daniel said.

“Thanks for bringing this for me, Dad.” Carolyn said, as she hugged her father.

“Well, you girls lock up and stay safe. Your uncle Ray said he spotted a couple of those trolls in the woods so you should be careful if you do go for a run later.” Daniel said as he returned her hug.

He stepped outside and began walking up the road. Once he was in sight of Carolyn’s house, transformed and took off through the woods, taking the shortcut home.

Carolyn and Cindy took turns in the wash down room to get showers before changing into their clean clothes. They put their clothes in the washer and put in extra soap, hoping to get the smell out of them. They sat down to eat their dinner and then Carolyn said she was going for a run.

“Hold down the fort till I get back.” She told Cindy as she stepped outside the back door of the clinic. She transformed and took off towards her house. She wanted to make sure that everything was locked up tight since she would not be there tonight.

As she got close, she noticed a strange glow coming from the Camelia bush near her mailbox and wondered what was going on. She slowly crept forward and had to blink several times to make sure of what it was she was seeing.