Scared Dog Bests Long Dead 'Gator

Printed Feb. 1920

Fearless Journalists and Compositors Pale at Scene of Devastation

SHELBYVILLE, Missouri. — A dead alligator caused more terror to a long, slim country dog that came to town the other day than a dozen live ones would have created. While the dog's owner was talking to the editor of the Herald, the dog went to sleep over in a corner, and when he woke up the place was dark and all the doors locked.

In the office was a baby alligator in a glass tank. The alligator had departed this life some time ago, and was preserved in some sort of fluid. But the country dog didn't know that. All he saw was some strange looking animal floating around in the tank of water.

Just what happened when the dog became aware that he was locked in with such an uncanny companion can only be surmised by such deduction as Sherlock Holmes might make on the ensuring homicide.

When the foreman of the print shop arrived at the hour prescribed by union labor regulations, he thought at first he might be in the wrong place. The shop he left the night before was orderly, everything where it belonged. Now it looked like a devil's dance had been going on. The alligator was sprawled out on the floor, and suggested a big toy that had run down. The glass tank was in more pieces than the Dutchman's clock. The doors and windows showed marks where the dog had frantically tried to gnaw its way to freedom and, the foreman said, "There were indications that he had climbed up to the telephone to send in any alarm."

Sheets of heavy editorial, country correspondence and poetry were scattered about, with imprints of dog feet upon them, as he had tracked across the press fountain and distribution plates in seeking some place to hide.

The foreman said that everything that wasn't spiked down seemed to have moved about. No cyclone from Kansas could have jostled things about more than did that poor country dog during his exciting night when he had the power of the press all to himself.

If that little 'gator had been alive he would certainly have enjoyed himself.

Progressing among the wreckage, the foreman found the dog over in a corner, seemingly all in, but when he opened the back door something whizzed past him and he heard the snapping of wind out in the alley.

The dog had gone back to the country.