Meanwhile, Mother's troops were scurrying around to replace the food the monkeys had eaten or spoiled. I pointed out, several times, that only a small portion of the assembled provisions had been out on the picnic table during the monkeys’ raid—probably less food had been spoiled than we usually had left over after one of my family's bashes. But no one paid the slightest attention to me, so I eventually gave up.
Anyway, perhaps they had a better handle than I did on how much food would be needed for this particular party. Apart from more than the usual number of relatives, we also had quite a few visitors. About twenty of the SOBs were still around. Apparently the animal prison break had been the work of Shea and a small hard-core cadre within the organization. The rest, after assisting in the wolves’ recapture, stayed around to eat and apologize repeatedly for their leader's misdeeds.
“I mean, what a stupid thing to do,” I overheard one of them saying. “Like turning a bunch of wolves loose at a picnic is striking a big blow for animals’ rights.”
“He yelled at me last week for getting a cat from the animal shelter,” another one said. “As if keeping a pet were something really immoral.”
“You know, I don’t think he really likes animals all that much,” the first one said.
And many Caerphilly residents seemed to be turning up— ostensibly to help with the animal roundup, though I didn’t see many of them leaving when they found out that the roundup was complete.
Practically the only people I didn’t see were the Sprockets. And that worried me. I’d been surprised how easily they’d let me evict them earlier, and I’d fully expected them to show up and try to resume their digging, under cover of the party. The fact that they hadn’t seemed to indicate that they had something sneakier and more annoying planned. Like showing up in the middle of the night and beginning to dig with ponderous and unsuccessful efforts at silence.
So at dusk, with the animal roundup mostly complete and the party definitely hitting its stride, I was sitting in Dr. Smoot's Adirondack chair with an ice pack on my black eye, scanning the crowd with my good one, and fretting.
“Don’t worry,” Michael said, dropping by to check on me for the twentieth time. “We won’t be taking any pictures tomorrow.”
“Speak for yourself,” Rob said. “I plan on taking millions.” “But not of Meg,” Michael said.
“Aw, come on,” Rob said. “I’ve never seen such an awesome black eye.”
I glared at him, and he snapped yet another picture of me with the ice pack over my eye and nose.
“I think the ice pack's probably done all the good it's going to,” Dad said.
“Better safe than sorry,” I said. “Besides, it's soothing.”
Actually, the ice pack was almost as annoying as Rob, and the intense cold was giving me a headache, and I might have abandoned it, except that Rob's annoying determination to take a picture of me with my eye swollen half shut had brought out my stubborn side.
“Dr. Langslow!” One of the off-duty protesters came running up, looking agitated. “They need you over in the trenches. Someone fell in, and we think he's hurt himself.”
I followed Dad to the side of the house where the trenches were still in active use. A crowd had gathered around one of the trenches near the barn, and when I had wormed my way to the front of it, I saw Barchester Sprocket lying at the bottom. Rutherford Sprocket was standing directly across from me on the other edge of the trench, holding a shovel and frowning down at his fallen comrade.
“Ah,” I said. “I was wondering when they’d show up. Is he all right?”
“We could sue,” Rutherford said. “Incredibly dangerous, just leaving trenches lying around like that.”
“There's caution tape around it,” I said. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, he fell in one of the trenches the two of you dug.”
“Poetic justice,” Rob said.
“Hoist by his own petard,” Michael added.
“We could still sue,” Rutherford said.
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “We have lawyers in the family.”
“So do we.”
“Lots of lawyers,” I said. I looked around at the assembled crowd, about a hundred of them, most of them relatives. “Will all the family attorneys present please raise your hand?”
Seventy or eighty hands went up. In fact, about the only people who didn’t raise their hands were the SOBs and Rose Noire, and I could tell she was tempted. For some things, like playing fast and loose with the truth when convenient, I could always count on my family. And at least a dozen of them weren’t lying. I wasn’t sure if Rutherford believed it, but he stopped muttering about suing.