Читать книгу The Dogs and the Fleas - Frederic Scrimshaw - Страница 6

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Unprofitable Victory.—Plague of Fleas.—Desperate Condition of the Dogs.

NOW the poor fool dogs of Canisville had been told by their own fleas that victory over the wicked dogs of Kyhidom meant Freedom, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Prosperity, Universal Wealth, Heaven, to themselves; and they believed them. But it did not. On the contrary, Freedom, Liberty, Equality, etc., etc., gradually vanished like a setting sun, and a great plague of itch, came upon all the dogs; and from the rising of the sun until the going down thereof, and until his rising again, the dogs scratched and scratched and abraded themselves against walls and posts, and howled and barked and barked and barked about the “Good old times” when all dogs were healthy and lustrous of coat.

And the dogs grew thin and lank and mangy looking. Their eyes grew lustreless, and their ribs could be counted by the naked eye at quite a distance. Their ears hung down; their spirit departed; and only when some specially venomous flea gave a dog a specially venomous nip did he awake from his listlessness; with a quick explosive yelp he would suddenly flop on the ground and cause his hind leg to vibrate with the rapidity of a suddenly released spring.

But as for the fleas they prospered in an inverse ratio to the dogs. All the qualities of the dogs seemed to be transferred to them. As the dogs grew thin the fleas grew fat and plump. As the dogs grew listless the fleas grew lively. As a total aggregate of dog and flea there seemed to be no loss of volume; for what one lost the other seemed to gain. The average of blood, vitality and energy seemed about as before; and to the outside spectator, it made no difference; but it was another matter entirely with the constituent parts; for the only part of this society that was abundantly satisfied was the fleas, and the only part that was not at all satisfied was the dogs.

And it came to pass that the dogs became possessed, seemingly, of a desire to work harder. Everyone now frenziedly tore around, scratching in gutters for any kind of dirty eatables, nosing in garbage barrels and keeping up an incessant trot in search of something to eat. Moreover they seemed to become possessed of the devil. Their tempers went sour, and they seemed to be perpetually on the hunt for a fight. Let but one dog be found munching a bone, and instantly half-a-dozen others, with growls, would rush upon him and compel him to let go, only to snarl, and rage and battle for it amongst themselves; from which conflict several would emerge bleeding, torn and ragged. And the more they fought and squabbled for bones and scraps, the scarcer the bones and scraps seemed to grow. The dogs were always hungry, and in spite of their utmost efforts many fell by the wayside and died of starvation; and the wail of the hungry ones nightly went up to heaven.

Why was all this? Nobody seemed to know, save a few old fogy dogs who remembered the good time of the reign of the departed chieftain, Bull McMastiff. They said that there were as many bones and scraps in the community as ever there were; yea, that there were more than ten times as many as in McMastiff’s reign. They said that the real reason was that every dog had become so thickly settled with fleas, that, no matter how hard and how many hours a day he hunted for food, he could never get enough to nourish himself, because the fleas he carried ate him up and so continually sucked his blood, that they kept him always thin and on the very edge of starvation. Said they: “Behold the fleas; they toil not, neither do they spin, neither do they hunt after bones, nor do any manner of work on the Sabbath, nor on any other day, for a living; and yet, verily, not a dog in all his plumpness in the good old times, was half so plump as one of these. Behold how easy be the times these suckers have; the body which maintains them carries them around, and is, in all respects, their most humble and obedient servant.”

But the bare-ribbed, hungry and flea-ridden mob of dogs derided these wise old stagers and mockingly cried out to them, “Go up, ye bald heads; what do ye know about these things?” “Shut up your jaw!” “Pull down your vest!” “Shoot them teeth!” and other such ribald remarks. Therefore the wise old dogs did shut up, and did no more try the impossible job of teaching fools. And in a few more years they drew up their feet and gave up the ghost; and the community had rest from their unwelcome prophesying.

But the miseries of the dogs did not abate with the death of those who told them what the matter was. Every day the police dogs reported that they had discovered another one either dying or dead of starvation; and then the dogs ran together and called a confab, which they named an “inquest.” And the “inquest” was a solemn ceremony where a dozen or more dogs, each blind in one eye, headed by another dog called a “Coroner”—also blind in one eye and weak in the other—looked the dead dog all over and then said: “Natural causes;” “Visitation of God;” “Anæmia;” “Atrophy;” “Cardialgia;” “Vacuity of the Alimentary Canal,” and then ordered somebody to bury him in the sacred place of dogs called the “Field of the Potter.”

But it was several times noticed that no “inquest” was ever held over a flea. When a flea died he was always in bed, surrounded by a coming and going host of his sorrowing pulician friends, and attended by a peculiar set of creatures called “Emdees.” who did all they could to retard his death. And when he was dead they all signed an elaborately ornamented paper called a “certificate,” which set forth that the “late lamented” sucker had “deceased” and “passed away” and “gone to Heaven” by reason of the highly respectable complaint known as “Abnormal Enlargement of the Paunch,” and recommended him to the gracious notice and distinguished consideration of the angels.