Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

 

Newfoundland in St. Louis Accumulates a Stock of Twenty.

     A dog which steals door mats for its own use as a mattresses, because it objects to sleeping on the cold ground, is the latest St. Louis development in the line of unusual animal intelligence.

     The dog is named Grover, after the President of the United states, and is a big, black Newfoundland, the property of Col. Al Golden at 513 Chestnut street. The Colonel said:

     “He stole his first door mat, or, rather, his first three door mats, just about three weeks ago. Just which of our neighbors he despoiled, heaven alone knows, because there was no way of identifying the door mats. They were  promply taken from his doghouse the next morning and stowed in our cellar, to await a possible claimant. And that night he went out and stole three more door mats, which he disposed in his quarters as artistically as could the best bachelor housekeeper on earth. They, too, were taken from him and placed in our cellar, and then he stole two more that same night.

     “And so it went from that time forward, until we had at last to tie Grover up at night, he having by that time accumulated a large stock of door mats, about twenty in all, which are now awaiting claimants in our cellar.

     “I don’t know, for the life of me, just what the crime may be that Grover has been guilty of. Whatever it is, I am keeping him in hiding to escape the penalty thereof, but suppose I am responsible, and I have all the door mats ready for resitution. The funny thing about it is that in all our neighborhood, despite this wholesale door mat raid by Grover, I haven’t heard one complaint of anyone having lost a door mat. It may be that Grover was crafty enough to do his thieving just outside of our neighborhood, but I can’t believe this possible.