I completed this pattern, but I couldn't follow the instructions as written while joining the tail to the body.

The last row of the tail says there should be 24 sts. The tail is joined to the body between rounds 15 and 16 of the body. Round 15 consumes 8 of the 24 sts of the tail, which leaves 16 unworked sts on the tail. Round 16, however, only calls to work 14 of those 16 sts, which would leave 2 unworked sts. I had to improvise to get the stitch count back to what it should be in the next few rounds.

My guess is that the instructions could work as written, but they just might not be specific enough about which stitches should be into which pieces (e.g. in Round 16 when it says "dec" it might mean "1 single crochet decrease through both layers of body and tail," even though that would not be the default assumption without additional instructions.)

How did you all cope with this discrepancy? Or did I read the pattern wrong?