Jack was a mongrel dog of collie descent who lived on a farm.
Being of collie descent, Jack should have been a good hard
worker who
herded the sheep all day with enthusiasm. But Jack was lazy and
shiftless. Mostly he just lay around, ate all the
table scraps
and anything else he could get his teeth around, and pooped on the
floor when he was being particularly aggravating.
His owners
wanted to get rid of him, but they didn’t have the heart to take him to
the pound, so they thought up a sneaky and
devious plan to keep their
poor faithful dog out of their house.
“Jack,” they said one day, in the tone of voice that they usually used
for “Do you want to go for a nice drive in the truck!!??”
Only
this time they said, “Do you want to go into town and fetch us a bucket
of blue steam!!?? Go on, Jack, go fetch!” You
see, Jack’s
owners knew there were no such things as buckets of blue steam, but
their little mongrel of collie descent knew no
such thing, and when he
went to get one, he would never be able to find one, thus spending the
rest of eternity on a fruitless
search!
Unfortunately, his owners had forgotten that Jack was lazy and
shiftless. When he went into town, he was quickly sidetracked
by
a little old lady who patted him on the head and threw him a
bone. Gnawing happily, Jack made his way back home.
When he got there, his owners were disenchanted. Here he was,
hardly gone for an hour, masticating some piece of smelly pig
femur all
over their living room carpet, and he didn’t even have any blue steam!
They confiscated his bone and threw it out the window. “Bad
Jack!” Then they locked him in the bathroom for the night.
After
a little while, Jack fell asleep. So did his owners.
But late that night, the bone (which just happened to be magic) began
to sprout little leafy tendrils. Soon it had grown into a giant
bonestalk that extended all the way up into the clouds. And
in
one of the clouds lived a giant cat.
The cat noticed the bonestalk sticking up into its bed, and it
sauntered down the stalk to inves-
tigate, wreaking terrible carnage on
the land. “Hmm,” it purred when it found Jack’s home.
“Fee
Fie, Fo, Fun! I smell the blood of an American!” And the
cat got hold of Jack’s mean
owners and gobbled them right up!
Then the cat, who was still hungry, sniffed the air again, and yowled,
“Fee Fie Fo Fent! I smell
a mongrel of collie descent!” And
the cat tried to gobble up Jack, but he smacked it over the
nose with a
rolled up newspaper.
The cat, very much affronted, stalked back up the bonestalk while Jack
barked ferociously.
Then he piddled on the giant plant, and it
withered and died.
He would have smacked it over the nose with a rolled up newspaper too,
except bonestalks
don’t have noses.
