Dog Show

“Come over here Junior, I want to show you something, and put down that old french fry, you can gnaw on it later.”

“Okay Grandpa. What are we doing up in the seats during the daytime?”

“Its not for the puddles of stale beer. What do you know about ‘dogs’?”

“Um, um, there bigger than cats, but louder, and they can’t climb trees, whatever those are.”

“What do they teach a young rat in school these days?! When I was your age we were outside all day... never mind, that's why I’m here, to teach you these things. Come up to the railing here and tell me what you see.”

“Wow! Its sure not like when they play with the orange ball, but I see people and, and, are those dogs?”

“Yup, what else?”

“Wait a minute, what are those things over there? They can’t be dogs too, there so much smaller!”

“Shhhssshh! They’re all dogs Junior, and they have very good hearing, and even better sniffers. They’re bigger than cats, usually, but don’t have sharp claws like the cats that we have to be wary of meeting up with. And they don’t climb well so you really only have to worry about them on the floor, but they hate us kid, don’t mistake that or you won’t come home to your Ma!”

“But look at that Grandpa!”

“Shhhhh!”

“Oh yeah, but look, he’s smaller than the rest. Gosh, you might even be as big as him, except he has longer legs.”

“Those are Chihuahuas, that’s where we get the expression ‘Their bark is worse than their bite’.”

“Look over there Grandpa, those dogs are huge. There all different sizes, how can they all be dogs?”

“I don’t know Junior, but they all act the same: bite, bark, poop, pee, eat and sleep.”

“That’s almost the same as cats, Grandpa, except for the bark part.”

“Right. Seems you’ve been doing some studying in school. I just wanted to show you all of them now, while they’re all too distracted sniffing each other’s butts to notice us up here. Any questions?”

“What are they all doing here? I’ve never seen them here before.”

“It’s a contest I think, later they get put into groups of the same size, and prance around the ring.”

“But why Grandpa?”

“Well Junior, that's the interesting thing, the winners get to go off and mate and the losers get their delicate parts cut off, or so I’ve heard.”

“Oh! We talked about that in school the other day, natural selection, right?”

“Close, same principle, but this is very Unnatural, the people are doing all the deciding, not nature.”

“Makes me glad to be a rat.”

“You said it Junior. We don’t have to rely on people, well not as directly as the dogs down there. We can eat what we want, when we want-- don’t forget that french fry.”

“And mate with who we want?”

“Oh yeah, your Ma said you had a girlfriend...”