The RCMP officers in Fort Resolution were easy to get along with, especially when there was no pressing work in the offing. Corporal Tom and I began building model airplanes in our leisure time; not the expensive gas-engined radio-controlled models of today, but stick and tissue crates powered by strands of rubber. We used to take the models down to the airstrip to fly them, much to the amusement of some of the local Natives who thought we were reverting back to our childhood days. If the truth be known, we had never completely grown up.
We also visited back and forth during office hours for the purpose of discussing local affairs and consuming large quantities of coffee. One day, in the single men's quarters of the RCMP establishment, Constable Don and I were sitting in the kitchen waitting for our morning coffee to brew. At one end of the kitchen there was a small holding cell for the incarceration of anyone who might be serving a few days in jail after conviction of some relatively minor offence. The prisoner shared the kitchen facilities with the constable.
Don went to the cupboard to get some cookies to serve with our coffee. He had to open a new box. Son of a gun, he exclaimed as he picked the box up, some mice have been through my food supply! Sure enough, a hole had been gnawed through one corner of the box of cookies. Then Don picke dup a box of dried apricots. Jeez, they've been at the fruit too. There was another hole in the corner and some of the fruit was missing. The RCMP provided most of the food supplies for their men in the North, shipped in on an annual basis. Much of Don's fruit for months to come was stored in the cupboard, and almost everything had been nibbled at. How could the mouse problem get out of hand so quickly? Don wondered.
I got up from the table to have a look. Don, I said, these tooth marks don't look like they were made by mice. And besides that, how could mice chew away at the corner of each package and then stack them neatly back on the shelf, box against box? I believe you should check with the jevenile that you were holding in the cell a few days ago. Don must have gotten up after a late night or he would have thought of that explantion himself.
Son of a gun, he said again, I believe you're right. I thought he was harmless so I let him have the run of the kitchen without keeping an eye on him. The young offender had carefully bitten away the bottom rear corners of the dried fruit boxes, about 2 dozen in all, and extracted a bit of fruit from each one. Then he had stacked the boxes back on the shelf, arrayed in the same fashion as before, so no holes were visible. Presumably, he thought that he would be long gone before the act was discovered. He might have gotten away with it too, if he had left the cookies alone. They were used on a daily basis, wheras the fruit was used only infrequently. Actually, he id get away with it. What else could Don reasonably do except consider that he had been the victim of a practical joke? . . . |
