[LawDog]

Bearing in mind that the search warrant was only for the garage and apartment, and not wanting to find myself in Animal Control's Bad Graces (again) I moped up the steps to the main house and rang the doorbell.

Light footsteps approached the door, followed by a long pause. Then the sound of the footsteps heading away from the door.

*sigh*

I pulled my badge out from the collar of the suit and held it prominently in one paw.

This time the footsteps were accompanied by a heavier tread. I waved my badge at the peep-hole and was rewarded with the door opened just enough for me to be beheld by an extremely suspicious eye.

I tipped my hat (top, mauve in colour) politely, "Afternoon, sir. Sheriff's Office. Pardon the interruption, but we're going to be serving a warrant on your garage and apartment. The Sheriff told me to tell you that he'd take it kindly if y'all would stay inside the house until we got things under control."

Long pause.

'Under control" murmured the gentleman slowly as he opned the door a little more fully, "Are you planning on that there control thing happening any time soon?"

Smart aleck.

"Can't really tell with this kind of thing, sir. We'll let you know as soon as possible."

Might as well get this over with. I leaned slightly right and looked around the gentleman to the lady of the house, "Ma'am", tip of the hat again, "Mind if I borrow some of your flowers?"

She looked at me, at the innocent tulips on the edge of the walk, and back to me.

"Umm. Go right ahead. You do know that you're...pink?"

"Hadn't noticed, ma'am" I lied gallantly, while selecting a pair of yellow tulips that set off the mauve spats nicely, "We'll be around back, if you need us."

I trudged back to the street, turned left and walked down to where the driveway from the garage entered the street. The garage sat about twenty feet or so back, with the apartment being the second floor of the structure.

The only ways in or out, were two roll-up garage doors and a people-type door facing me, and the only windows to be seen were on the side facing the street.

*sigh*

Distracting. Hah.

I looked around and made sure that I was at the junction of the driveway and the public street, set my top hat securely on the mask, straightened the gloves and spats, took a deep breath...

...and burst into a full-blown, top-of-the-lungs, you'll-bloody-well-hear-this-one-at-Carnegie-Hall rendition of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. While using the tulips as the microphone.

By God. *snort, snort* I did the works. Vocals. Back-up vocals. Sound effects. Kinda-sorta instruments. Howling. The whole nine yards.

And, of course, Dirty Deeds has that lovely guitar solo, which lends itself quite nicely to an air-guitar -- excuse me -- tulip guitar performance.

Well, if it didn't, it does now.

Unfortunately, the tulip-guitar solo kind of led into a dance.

It was fairly energetic dance. And maybe a touch expressive...

All right! There was gyrating going on.

However, I do not think that I was doing -quote "The gorilla version of a fan dance" -unquote; I don't think that you can do -quote "Suggestive things with a hat" -unquote when you're wearing a fur suit over armour and that over jeans; and I do take umbrage at the suggestion that I -quote "Gave them the 'Full Monkey'" -unquote.

Part 3 to follow. In a bit.

LawDog