Stories for Animals

By I. H. Smythe

There are literally millions of books written about animals, but only two books written specifically for animals and this is one of them.* Originally these stories were published on the wind as an olfactory collection for dogs, but when they soared to #1 on the bestseller lists, other creatures demanded versions for themselves. Thus they were published with vegetable based inks for the edification of rabbits and slugs; converted into a vigorous waggle dance for honeybees; transcribed into whale songs, bird calls, cricket chirps, and elephant trumpets; and, lastly, translated into cow pies for the satisfaction of dung beetles and houseflies. All of these animals enjoyed reading about phobic cats, skeptical basset hounds, heroic honeybees, tree-hugging slugs, and megalomaniacal mollusks but now, at long last, Stories for Animals is available to animals of all species including yours.

* The other is Poetry for Animals, available at fine bookstores and from woodland creatures everywhere.

Recommended for ages 11+ (77+ in dog years)

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450296267

I. H. Smythe

I. H. SMYTHE (BMus, BA, MA) is a playwright, musician, humorist, and author of three books including Poetry for Animals and Dwynwen’s Feast. She currently lives in Calgary, Canada. Visit I. H. Smythe at www.ihsmythe.ca.

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Copyright © 2011 by I. H. Smythe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-9625-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-9666-3 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-9626-7 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 01/26/2011

Also by I. H. Smythe

Poetry for Animals

Dwynwen’s Feast

Contents

Preface I

Preface II

Scaredy Cats

Hounded

Fish and Chips

Slugfest

Bee Line

Questions To Focus Your Mind

Afterword

To Sappho, Rigel, and Steve-

who believed in me

even when I was invisible

and smote their kine

If you are reading this, you are an animal.

A great ape, actually.

Preface I

Dear Reader:

Allow me to congratulate you on learning how to eat with a fork, how to walk without dragging your knuckles, how to resist the urge to pick the nits out of your fur, and-last but not least-how to read a preface. Bravo! That you don’t swing from branch to branch, or groom yourself with your toilet-claws, or forage for nuts and predate on other primates is a credit to you. Not all primates learn to do these things, but you, personally, stand out among the great apes as a shining example of what can be achieved with perseverance, an expanded cerebral cortex, and about $150,000 dollars. Raising a great ape such as yourself is not cheap, you understand, but the fact that your parents picked you over the cheaper hairy-eared dwarf lemur, or Zanzibar bushbaby, or white-cheeked spider monkey just goes to show how much they wanted a sapient Homo. It’s not the only reason they wanted you, I’m guessing, but being the exact species they’d always dreamt of might be worth pointing out, to your parents as well as to your teachers, and especially to prospective employers. Belonging to the in species can give you the edge you need out there in an increasingly competitive job market because-let’s face facts-Homo sapiens almost always get the upper management positions. It’s unfair, but to be honest, no one really wants to deal with a CEO who eats insects and urinates willy-nilly on the boardroom floor.

I hope that the following Stories for Animals will fill you with merriment, and that if you are reading them secretly in class, they will cause you to snort, and then to chuckle, and then to erupt with laughter and wild territorial hooting. I hope you laugh so hard that your teacher trumpets at you across the room and says something like, Perhaps you’d like to share the joke with the rest of the class. Too many students treat this sort of question as merely rhetorical, rather than what it is: an open invitation. Take the opportunity to regale your fellow students with tales of bees and basset hounds, slugs and snails, and all the other animals who are your distant cousins on the great Family Tree of Life. Read about how other animals tackle phobias, magical thinking, aliens, environmental responsibility, and job opportunities for those among us with brains the size of mouse droppings. And as you read to your fellow primates, ask them to ponder the study questions located at the end of the book. Tell them not to worry-nobody is going to ask them about plot, characters, or setting, or use words like metaphor, simile, or even oxymoron (which sounds only like a detergent for idiots). In fact, these questions are not like normal study guide questions at all, there to suck the joy out of every last brain cell. They are intended only to increase happiness, which is one of the most important emotions for primates such as yourselves and, indeed, for all animals everywhere.

Again, congratulations on your achievements, my little ape friend, and I hope you enjoy reading these Stories for Animals as much as I enjoyed the many delicious cups of coffee I drank while writing them.

Most sincerely,

I. H. Smythe

Preface II

Dear Parent, Teacher, Guardian, Guardian Angel, Governess, Nursery Maid, Butler, Bodyguard, or Correctional Officer:

Each of the following five stories was written with the students at Westmount Charter School in mind, all of whom are-as we like to say in the literature-giphted. You will notice, then, that the stories comprising this volume are of somewhat unusual length and weight. This is because, like Doctor Who’s Tardis, children’s heads are much bigger on the inside than the outside, and they therefore require stories of considerable heft and dimension to fill them up. Most children prefer stories of substance anyway, and tales such as The puppy was sad but luckily he got adopted and so he was happy leave them cold.

Now, because some of my Stories for Animals contain complicated words and sophisticated concepts, I have occasionally been accused of didacticism. This is an outrage. My intent is not to teach anyone anything-leave that to television, I say. I seek merely to entertain, and if a child accidentally learns the meaning of a word along the way, or how to mix the perfect Manhattan, or the best method for taking the temperature of a cat, this is in no way my fault. In fact, the truth is that I use large words and big ideas chiefly because my children use them. For example, the other day one of my children, who shall remain nameless, casually used the word elephantine to describe a very large object. This surprised me, since I was only dimly aware of the word elephantine myself and have never used it in his presence; nor have I read the word elephantine to him; nor do we have an elephant as a pet; nor do we own an enormous fork with gigantic tines. Where had he learned this word, I asked him, but before he even replied, I knew that the answer must be a book, of course, and how I wanted to shake the hand of the intrepid author who had dared to use such a formidable word with its four jumbo syllables, its two tusks, and a trunk.

TV, my child replied in answer to my question, and my eyes rolled in their sockets-but, as I should have known, the little jester was having me on, and in fact, he had read this word in a book, along with several thousand others much like it. In my experience, elephantine words, like elephantine gifts, delight and amuse children so long as they are allowed simply to play with them, and not to be forever disgorging them on vocabulary tests. (Note well that some students, like some caterpillars, are known to regurgitate simply as a method of defence.) Admittedly, large and unfamiliar words are sometimes hard to read aloud, but there is no shame in mispronunciation or, indeed, in faking. The point is to have a happy time and not to worry too much about sounding like a complete nincompoop in front of those to whom you are the most vulnerable.

Happy reading,

I. H. Smythe

PS: Please note that I use the phrase who shall remain nameless merely as a figure of speech and not as a statement of intent, and that now would be a good time to call Child Welfare Services back and tell them it was all just a silly misunderstanding. Thank you.

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Scaredy Cats

It occurs to me to ask you whether or not you’ve met Rose and Suki-two sisters who live just down the street from you and who also, as you might have noticed, happen to be cats. Perhaps you’ve been to their charming but unusual home and noticed the broken light fixtures, the flock of parrots, and the sterile sleeping sphere in which they have been known to bunk down for the night. You might have wondered why they have gymnastic rings hanging from the basement ceiling and a large collection of books on the subject of how to appease an angry firefighter. You might even have been at their fortress-like home a while back, having catnip tea and biscuits in the parlour, when Rose suddenly bolted upright, her teacup smashing to the floor as she dashed madly out the door and into the safety of her sterile sphere. Or perhaps it was Suki who, just as you were about to say, The colour of your scratching post is divine-I must get the name of your decorator, suddenly screeched like a banshee and fainted into your arms. If you know Rose and Suki, you know that this sort of behaviour is absolutely normal because both Rose and Suki are, I’m very sorry to say, phobic.

Phobic is a word with which you are undoubtedly well acquainted, but just in case your school teacher doesn’t teach you vocabulary because she is terrified of words (logophobia), let me tell you what it means. To be phobic means to be so afraid of something that you bolt upright and smash your teacup and dash madly from the room into your sterile sphere, rather than face the thing of which you are afraid. Even thinking of the thing of which you are phobic might cause you to suddenly screech like a banshee and faint into the arms of your guest. The term phobic is often used as a suffix (an attachment to the end of a word, and I really must have a chat with your teacher) and is often tacked onto the end of the Latin term describing the offending horror. So, for example, the term phasmaphobia means to be afraid of ghosts-from the Latin phasma (meaning ghost), and phobia (meaning to sweep up broken pieces of teacup). I’m afraid there are a great many phobias because there are a great many things to be afraid of. And I hardly exaggerate when I tell you that if a thing exists, either in reality or in the imagination, then there exists a person who is afraid of it. The person may only be mildly phobic or wildly so, but regardless of the intensity, phobias are always a source of misery for the phobic individual. They create panic, anxiety, and deep despair, and are a boon only to the teacup industry.

Before I tell you about Rose and Suki’s particular phobias, let us talk a little more about phobias in general. Or even in generals, because even the bravest military officer is not immune to irrational fears. He might be afflicted with Bolshephobia or even, heaven forbid, Walloonophobia. (If you don’t know what Walloons or Bolsheviks are, I shouldn’t bother to look them up, lest you discover that you too are mortally afraid of such creatures. As your teacher has undoubtedly told you, there’s no sense inviting trouble by looking up strange words in a dictionary.) Of course, some phobias are only natural. For example, I once knew a vampire who was heliophobic (afraid of the sun), alliumphobic (afraid of garlic), and catoptrophobic (afraid of mirrors), and nobody thought the worse of him. His wife, however-herself a vampiress-was terrified of blood (hemophobic) and was consequently considered something of a wingnut. Still, some phobias simply cannot be helped. Who among us is not nucleomituphobic (afraid of nuclear weapons) or thanatophobic (afraid of dying), or, worse yet, philemaphobic (afraid of kissing)? Weapons, death, and kissing are all things that strike terror into the heart of any sane person, and there is no shame in being afraid of them.

There are, however, things that are not inherently terrifying and yet are still feared more than fear itself. Oh, and this would be a good time to add that the famous person who once said, You have nothing to fear but fear itself, was a phobophobe (a person with a fear of phobias), and my guess is that he was probably speaking into a mirror. The rest of us have plenty to fear, especially if we happen to be skittish and cowardly. Of course, some fears are just plain silly-even the most lily-livered among us needn’t have a fear of string, for example (linonophobia), or of otters (lutraphobia), or of chopsticks (consecotaleophobia). But other phobias are not silly at all; they are extremely serious and debilitating and can lead only to a life of dejection and misery. For example, it’s a terrible thing if a person is afraid of gravity (barophobia) and can only truly be happy floating about in a pod in deep space. But even more pitiful than this is the unfortunate soul who is not only barophobic but spacephobic as well, and who therefore cannot be happy on planet Earth, nor in the spacepods so many barophobes call home.

Some phobias are cruelly named. For instance, a person who is afflicted with a fear of stuttering has to explain to his speech therapist that he is psellismophobic, a word that would take the average stutterer about a week to negotiate, at which point he would find that the speech therapist had given up and gone home days before, and who could blame her? And what of those who suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (a fear of long words)? Who but a sadist would embed the phobia in the very name of the phobia itself? And what kind of child would leave a scrap of paper with this word lying around on his or her logophobic teacher’s desk? (Maybe now would be a good time to sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.)

Admittedly, some phobias can be extremely useful. If you want to get out of having your bath, for example, you might explain to your mother that you are ablutophobic (afraid of bathing) and hope that your mother doesn’t have an equally strong phobia of dirty children. Similarly, if you want to get out of going to school, it might be worth a try explaining to