Goat, Dog, Cuckoo
THIS looks, perhaps, as though it were going to be some kind of a fable. Well, it may be that there is indeed a moral, no less admirable because it is elusive, concealed somewhere in it—I mean in the following quite unfabulous record of a little episode of very wild life figuring the three creatures above mentioned, which I was lately observing. What the moral would be, though, I cannot think at the moment : I leave it to the reader to suggest one. But this is what happefied, as I observed things from my window overlooking the little green lavin where Peggy, the she-Mephistopheles of a goat, is some- times made fast for nocturnal browsing.
I may at once admit the possibility that I was sub- consciously gloating over the fact that Peggy was tied up. My nasturtiums, just showing above ground, were safe, I may have considered, at least till sunrise. But •I wasn't really worrying about anything, not even con- sciously thinking except perhaps idly about the cuckoos, a legion of which were calling from all about the woods. Peggy of course was at her usual game, tearing up everything within her radius, but as she could get at nothing but grass this time it hardly mattered. Things were profoundly peaceful. It was one of those evenings that one knows are not really allowed by the clerk of the weather, but that have just slipped down to comfort humanity whilst that autocrat snoozed. Everyone so happy . .. . and then this dog arrived, in a sort of miraculous yelping whirlwind.
I say miraculous because from what I could make out this dog arrived by way of the larch-tops, as though it had been a flying fox. But it was not a flying fox. It was certainly a dog ; and yet, whose dog, what dog— above all, what kind of dog ?
It was not exactly a well-bred dog, or rather, puppy, for it was only a puppy, though a large one. It was black, with an enormous head, a curly tail, and an extraordinarily engaging expression. It appeared to believe whole-heartedly that it was welcome on our lawn. dO not think it was. It seemed to me that Peggy took an instant dislike to it. BO it was not at all put out ; with a loud shrill cry of delighted recognition it leapt towards Peggy, and in that instant the evening's peace was shattered. The dog, I understood, had come for a well-known game, a game that it had played before. The goat, Peggy, I should explain, though secured to her tree-stump by an iron cable, wore also fastened about her neck a loose rope of about the chain's length. This trailed along the grass as Peggy moved ; and it soon became evident that it was this that the dog found so interesting. In a few moments our little lawn, once so secluded, so quiet, so rural, was transformed into some- thing like a football field overrun by Tottenham Hotspurs and Sheffield Uniteds : the dog, I should say—judging merely by the name—being a Hotspur. For with what amazing energy and self-confidence did it tackle that believed-to-be-omnipotent and now far from united goat I The goat, I mean, was not united in its policy : it seemed to have several opinions about things : it did not know what to do. But the dog did. The dog's idea was to seize the goat's loose length of rope and, no matter what might happen, hold on to it ; and this, after several admirably sensational but abortive attempts, with the goat rushing hither and thither butting only thin air, it finally succeeded in doing. That started the game in earnest.
I suppose I should have been sorry for Peggy, the captive creature ; but really it was difficult to pity her. The dog was so much smaller and so debonair even when, as one would have thought, it was having the life hustled out of it by its infuriated opponent. It was not long before the goat began running round and round at a tremendous pace, taking the dog with it ; yet, even when it was whirled right clear of the ground and kept in mid- air for a full circuit of the lawn, the debonair dog would not admit that it was not enjoying itself. I believe it actually was enjoying itself. I could see it grinning as it whirled : whereas Peggy wore an expression of concen- trated malignity and was so out of temper.with the whole performance that she several times halted in the midst of her circular charges and began spitefully to rip up the grass. This was plainly fury, not hunger.
The dog, anyhow, saw to it that she did not get more than a mouthful at a time. It leapt in again with a halloo of sheer joy—being careful, as it seemed to me, to get Peggy circulating so that her chain was unwound from the stump—and away went the two of them again, oblivious of everything but their own revolutions and collisions.
This went on for fully ten minutes : whirling, butting, prancing. ; bleating, and hilarious yelping—and one saw no reason why it should end before midnight : or why before sunrise ? But then came the cuckoo, like a referee with his whistle, and as suddenly as it had started the uproar was utterly over.
The cuckoo flew across, called thrice as it flew, and vanished into the wood. The dog let go, stood looking at Peggy with its tongue out, exhausted, but with an expression of delight on its face as who should say, " haven't we had a time I " and 'in a moment was gone. The goat went back to its grass-tearing, looking at once out- raged and relieved. There was silence on our little lawn, peace, and then again I could hear the cuckoos calling from a distance. The evening was as before.
What had happened ? A mere coincidence, that referee cuckoo ? Even so, I think it is hardly possible that there is not a rather good moral. somehow to be detected here : especially as this dog's presence is still wholly unexplained. Its coming and going had as little relation to time and the ordinary events of the modern world as have the movements of Aesop's ducks and grasshoppers.
H. M,
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