A Bone of Contention

A fox-terrier and a spaniel were fighting over a steakbone. Merciful heavens, they went for each other with teeth, claws, shoves, barks and kicks.

“Get away from my bone!” “This bone belongs to me!” “Mongrel!” “Flotsam!” “I’ll throttle you with your own tail!” “I’ll throw you to the cats!” “Oaf!”

“Fleaface!” “Lickspittle!” “Perpetrator!” It was a fearful spectacle, for both dogs were bleeding out of a dozen wounds.

Considering this opportunity, a young hawk, inexperienced in the sad ways of the world, came down from a tree in order to pick up the bone for himself.

The dogs stopped fighting at once. “Who’s this?” rasped the spaniel. “A foreigner!” the fox-terrier howled. “Brother dogs, unite!” And both dogs flung themselves on the bird.

The hawk was lucky he escaped alive that day with a small loss of feathers. No doubt, had I reached out a hand for the bone, the three would have leagued together as Animals against Man. And if a Martian had landed at that moment, I would have roused them personally to battle as Earth-dwellers against Mars. For there isn’t anybody with whom we couldn’t make a faction.

Meantime, the spaniel chewed one end of the bone and the foxterrier nibbled the other. They were still bleeding, but they were bleeding in peace.

This is one of Oscar Mandel’s 47 “Gobble-Up Stories”, which together with the extraordinary yarns “Chi Po and the Sorcerer” and “The History of Sigismund, Prince of Poland”, make up his Otherwise Fables. 270 pages, Prospect Park Books, publishers of the companion Otherwise Poems and the author’s polyphonic Last Pages (essays, a play, novellas, poems).