If you feed me, I promise to act normally.
The Underpants household has recently taken delivery of a new dog. He is a medium sized, off-white creature of indeterminate genetic heritage, but definitely slightly gun-doggish. For the want of anything better, we’ve decided to call him Houndle.
He is less than a year old and is currently programmed for not much other than voracious consumption, wanton destruction and sleep (there are certain other side effects of his existence, on the subject of which I shall remain silent).
Having named him after our fair town I was struck by the extent to which he resembles it.
Take, as an example, the principal route through each, In Oundle’s case from the Benefield Road in the west to Station Road in the East. In Houndle’s case from the end that barks to the end that doesn’t. How like my boisterous little pooches’ gastro-intestinal tract the A427 is (the A standing, I assume, for Alimentary).
Now whether Station Road or Benefield Road is the esophagus, I will leave the residents of Laxton Drive and Wakerley close to argue over, being at either end of the principal route through our urban anatomy. But whichever way the current is flowing, I think that there can be little doubt that the Market square has its canine equivalent in Houndle’s portly and indiscriminate stomach. Basically, goodies flow in where they are processed and distributed quickly and efficiently to those places where they will do the most good.
Around this smugly rounded belly the other vitals sit; The heart (Schools), The Liver (Commerce), The Lungs (Churches (no doubt Dizz will object)), The Brain (Town Hall…. (Yeah right!)). Whichever aspect of the town you would wish to twin with its respective part of the dogs anatomy (suggestions on a postcard please) they all benefit from the various nutrients carried there by the carriageway in question.
In Houdle’s case, these nutrients consist of a varied diet of Doggo economy biscuits, administered twice daily by Mrs U and Self, together an assortment of sweets, unwanted vegetables, peanut butter, chili peppers , beer and a dead spider (all provided at various times by one or other of the Nappies). Finally of course there are the self administered nutrients that, amongst other things, include horse poo, Lucretia’s discarded underwear, the contents of Mrs U’s flower bed and my new I-phone.
About eight weeks ago despite this varied and eclectic diet, Houndle began to lose weight quite rapidly. It wasn’t for the want of food; he was a four-legged vacuum cleaner, hoovering up anything vaguely edible that came within three feet of his little wet nose. But, to Mrs U’s increasing concern, his nose became drier and his erstwhile shiny yellow coat became more and more lackluster hanging off his poor little emaciated frame.
Finally, Mrs U took him down South Road to the Vets. She returned much relieved. After a small amount of probing, the vet had announced that Houndle had a nasty little parasitic worm, Tinea Waitrosea.
Apparently what this unpleasant and highly invasive parasite does is lodge itself in the intestine of its victim, upstream of the stomach, and intercepts all of the goodness flowing into organism into whose body it has trespassed. Of course there is no symbiosis in its relationship with the body in which it lives. It doesn’t redistribute any of the goodness it extracts, it just keeps it for itself; growing bloated at the expense of its increasingly unhealthy host.
You will be relieved to note that one large orange pill, two days, an incredibly unpleasant episode in the back garden and a vast amount of Doggo economy biscuits later Houndle was back to his previous bouncy and flatulent self.
It’s such a relief that, by contrast, our town can’t, unwittingly, ingest a similar malign parasite that will suck the goodness out of its poor little system and leave it a weakened and unhealthy shadow of its former self.
