Chapter 204

Hope held one of the outfits up as she repressed a giggle. "Dogs can see color, can't they?"

Arlene grabbed Spike, who had apparently figured things out and was sneaking off. "Oh, no you don't, Big Boy. You get to try on your new snowsuit." Then answering Hope's question, "They can see colors, but I've read that the colors they see probably aren't as intense to dogs as they are to humans. They have fewer cones in their eyes, and humans have several different types of cones that tend to enhance our color vision even more."

Hope let out a chuckle. "Well, I guess that's good in this instance. The picture on the website was bright, but seeing these things for real is ... different. They're really bright orange."

Arlene chuckled as she held up Spike's suit. "Good! That should ensure that our puppies won't get lost in the snow."

Hope unzipped Sugar's suit, then picked up the dog. She stuffed the puppy's left front leg into the suit, but as the girl was trying to push the right leg in, Sugar jerked her left leg out. Hope finally managed to get both front legs in, then was working on the back legs when Sugar pulled the front ones out again.

Frustrated, the teenager turned to look at an equally aggravated Arlene, who wasn't having any better luck with Spike. Arlene held her puppy up near her face to have a conference with him. "Look, Spike, your feet get cold along with the rest of you. You start shivering almost as soon as we're outside. You'll love your new outfit once you're in the snow."

Spike, unimpressed, licked her face.

"Looks like we're going to have to double-team them," the young Queen said to her buddy.

Hope put Sugar down. "Okay, you hold him and I'll put it on him."

That worked much better, and a couple of minutes later, Hope pressed the Velcro together along the length of Spike's back, sealing him in the suit, but he wasn't at all happy about wearing the outfit. The only things showing were his genitals, and his head from his ears forward. He did not like having his feet encased in the suit – not one bit.

When Arlene put him down, he snatched up first one foot then another, shaking them in an effort to free his feet, then began a shimmering movement in an effort to dislodge the suit. While he was preoccupied, Sugar dashed over to wrestle with him in what seemed to be the puppy's version of teasing. When she bowled him over, Spike growled at her.

"Your turn," Hope laughed as she snatched up Sugar.

Since they had already done it before with Spike, Sugar's encasement in her snowsuit went faster. Shortly, the puppies stood on the floor looking at each other with disgust written on their faces. "Aren't they cute?" the two girls squealed out in unison. They picked their dogs up and hurried into the hallway, almost colliding with Jeff as he was about to enter the living room.

"Tell Mom we'll clean up our mess when we get back from taking the puppies out," Arlene told her husband as he stood grinning.

"Too bad you didn't choose a bright color," he laughed.

Arlene stuck her tongue out at him as the two hurried down the hall with their squirming burdens.

At the back door, the two girls put the puppies down long enough to pull on their coats. When they were outside, Arlene and Hope stood looking around as the puppies did their business. Arlene smiled at the other girl. "The parking lot has been plowed, and even though there are a few drifts around the planters, we want a good-size area to test out the suits. Let's walk on back to the range."

Hope held Sugar against her body, but hadn't put her under her coat as she frequently did after her puppy did her business. "She isn't shivering yet, and by now she usually is, so I guess that 'great' material the advertisement bragged about is working."

"Yeah, Spike seems fine, too," Arlene agreed.

A couple of minutes later, they stopped at the range. With the fresh snow from the night before, there was an unobstructed snowfield roughly twelve to fifteen inches deep throughout the big level area.

Spike's nose started twitching, and Sugar's followed a second later. Both puppies began whining and thrashing about, trying to get down.

"What do you suppose they smell?" Hope wondered aloud. "Should we put them down? There might be an animal of some kind under the snow."

"I don't know what lives up here," Arlene said. "But I've seen an occasional small hole in the ground that I suspect is a burrow for some type of rodent. I doubt if the dogs will do more than just play with anything they find, and I certainly don't want them to be exposed to anything dangerous..."

But Hope had already put Sugar down, and Spike was yipping and trying his best to get out of Arlene's hands. "Okay. But you better not get into trouble," Arlene admonished as she put the puppy on the frozen ground at the edge of where the snowplow had made its farthest pass.

Both puppies launched themselves at the wall of snow where the snowfield began. Amazing the girls, Spike and Sugar burrowed into the mostly fresh powder snow and were out of sight in an instant. "Hey, wait," Arlene called out, starting into the snow behind Spike, but before she could take two steps, Spike popped out of the snow six feet in front of her, bouncing into the air as if he were on a pogo stick, looking around and barking, frantically. A second later, Sugar did the same thing.

"Wait. Come back here, Sugar," Hope called out, the worry evident in her voice.

"Crap, how can they move that fast?" Arlene grumbled as she realized that the dogs had taken a ninety degree turn to the left under the snow. Both dogs were continuing to bark frenziedly, and their occasional pop-ups were accompanied with coughing as they tried to bark and spit snow at the same time.

"What are they after?" Hope called out just before she dived into the snow, only to miss Sugar. "We can't let them catch anything. They might even kill it, or worse, catch rabies or something."

"They've had their rabies shots and Little One has enhanced them, so they won't catch anything," Arlene managed to get out just before Hope dived into the snow again. "Be careful, don't step on them," she admonished the younger girl as the Queen tried to catch up to Spike while being cautious about where she put her feet. Her cautious approach wasn't working.

Two steps later, Spike popped up a few feet to her left, apparently having circled back under the snow. As she dived for her puppy, she saw something brown and small burst through a trail left by the two girls, then quickly disappear again as it burrowed into the snow, Spike dead on its heels.

Sugar had also apparently doubled back as she chased her quarry, and when she passed through an open path created by the humans, Hope grabbed her. Sugar growled and thrashed, incensed by the chase, but Hope wasn't impressed by her puppy's antics. "Oh, no you don't, Little Lady. You're too small to be tangling with some wild creature under this snow."

Sugar began a mournful howl as she continued to try to get down and rejoin the chase.

Shortly, Arlene succeeded in corralling her puppy, also. As she jerked him clear of the snow, his legs continued to windmill, his focus still on the snow as his excellent hearing tracked the small creature that had barely escaped with its life.

Unknown to the girls, Jeff and his wives, along with Dave, his wives, Evie, Linda and Kim, were watching the chase on the big screen in the living room. Jeff was laughing so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes. "Bug-eyed rats wearing bright orange snowsuits chasing voles under the snow. I wonder what they would have done if they had caught one?"

"They are not bug-eyed rats," Diana indignantly said, although she was hard put to hold back her laughter as, on the screen, they saw Spike escape Arlene's hands and tear out again. But his escape was short-lived when Arlene pounced on him.

"I'll bet they have some cold feet," Dave laughed.

"Maybe not," Jeff responded. "I think the snowsuits have feet in them."

"I wasn't talking about the dogs. They're probably fine. Arlene and Hope, though, seem to have on regular running shoes. Bet their shoes are full of snow by now."

Jeff chuckled along with his Alpha. "After all those dives into the snow, I'll bet they have snow in places other than their shoes," the Prime added with a chuckle.

Jeff, thinking that Kayla and Art would like to see a video of the vole chase when the two got back from their training, not to mention everyone else, spoke to the computer, "Computer! Save..."

"'PUPPIES CHASING VOLES IN THE SNOW' ALREADY SAVED," the AI said before Jeff could get it out.

"Damn AI is getting uppity," Jeff muttered under his breath.

Helen and Laura winked at each other and grinned.

"Are those things the puppies were after really voles?" Diana asked her husband.

"Yeah, that flash we got of the one that jumped looked like a vole to me."

"Shit," Diana uncharacteristically said, almost gnashing her teeth as she ground out the word. "I thought we left those things back in Georgia." Then turning to her sister-wives, "Those little pests out there," she said motioning, "or their kin, ate the roots to my rosebushes over and over again. All of a sudden, a beautiful, healthy bush would just up and wilt. I started to check on one of the first bushes that had been affected, but when I pulled on the main stem, the whole bush just came up in my hands. There were no roots on it – none. The voles had eaten them. Then I realized what all those little humps and holes in the ground were. They were vole tunnels barely under the surface. I spent a fortune trying to get rid of those creatures, but I never managed to completely eliminate them, no matter how many things I tried. Those things breed like crazy. Now they're out here, or at least their cousins are. Maybe we need more Chihuahuas," she groused out, half serious.

"No more bug-eyed rats," Jeff said, just to stir her up.

"Then what do you suggest?" she almost snarled out as she again thought of dead rosebushes. "Your other wives and I are going to plant a lot more flowers and shrubs come spring, and you do not want us in a bad mood when those... things start killing our plants."

Jeff, realizing that Diana was very serious, said, "Yes, Ma'am, I'll take care of it," and he wasn't at all sarcastic with his response. Then with a slight twitch to the corner of his lips, he thought, Just a wee mite of C-4 in their tunnels should do the trick. This time I'm going to get rid of those suckers.

Sandra and Bobby had returned to their suite after Art left with Kayla to train. The two nurses had changed the bed, vacuumed, and generally put the rooms in pristine order. Bored, they sat in the living room of the suite to read, Sandra stretched partway out on one of the couches, and Bobby in a comfortable chair with her feet on an ottoman.

There was silence in the room for a time, broken only by the whisper of an occasional turned page. When Bobby realized that she had read the last paragraph three times and still didn't know what it said, she closed the book and looked over at her sister, only to see Sandra staring back at her.

Sandra, a little exasperation in her voice, said, "We've never had a problem with boredom before. When we were off-shift, we worked on the house, reloaded ammunition, whent shooting ... any number of things."

Bobby grinned at her. "There's a massive amount of brass in those barrels on the range, all divided out by caliber. Want to go reload some of it?"

"You're teasing, right? That magazine across the hall from the range has enough ammo in it to keep us shooting for years. Not to mention the cases already stacked in the range."

Bobby tossed her book aside and stood. "Yeah, but it's fun to make our own ammo and shoot it. Besides, Dave has already set up a big table for us right there on the range, and even bolted our presses to it. Let's give it a whirl. Anything beats sitting here staring at a book."

Sandra didn't bother to mark her place in her book, either, but tossed it aside and came to her feet. "Better than sitting here wondering when we'll get to make love to our husband again. Surely, he'll be back before supper and we can at least get in a quickie."

Bobby stopped to giggle. "Since when would you know about a quickie? Well, other than when we gave our virginity to that doofus."

"Oh, you know what I mean. I'm horny."

"We're both horny. We stay that way, in case you haven't noticed," she laughed as she hooked her sister's arm with hers. The two women took the few steps to the door and opened it just as Hope reached to knock. She was trying to balance her load, which included a folding easel, paper, and a case containing sketching pencils and tools, while trying to knock.