In chapter 9, Curly is on the phone with Chuck Muckle after an exhausting day. Muckle wants to know whether the story Curly is telling him is some kind of a "sick joke," but Curly insists that every detail is the truth. Muckle asks him to go over the information one more time.

When Curly had arrived at the construction site, he had found a chaotic scene. Kalo, the German dog trainer who had brought four rottweilers to guard the site, was running around inside the perimeter of the fence and waving a tattered red umbrella. When he saw Curly, Kalo frantically accused him of trying to kill the dogs. Curly had no idea what Kalo was talking about; the man then began yelling that each dog was worth about three thousand dollars and that there were poisonous snakes all over the construction site.

Curly tried to dismiss this, saying that he'd never seen a snake on the site. Infuriated, Kalo walked around pointing out one poisonous cottonmouth water moccasin after another; this presented a serious danger to his valuable dogs. Curly was "flabberghasted." Kalo loaded up his dogs with firm instructions that Curly was never to call him again.

Curley "emphatically" assures Muckle that he didn't report the incident to the police and that there shouldn't be any bad press about it for corporate headquarters to worry about.