The wealthy boy and his father lingered at the display cages at the front of the kennel, pointing at this or that man with sighs and hoo-hahs of amazement at the sheer beauty and diversity of them. And indeed, they were beautiful and diverse. In color, they ranged from the crystalline pale of a sea bell to the golden yellow-brown of a burnt meat stick. In size and shape, some were longish and thin, others smallish and thickset. In countenance, some were peppered with frecks, some with birthmarks and sunspots, others unstained. And their noses! They were generously bulbous, impertinently pointed, gallantly winged, impudently pugged, or nobly sloping like an oaf’s. One had a face so normal-looking that but for his size, he could have walked near undetected in a crowd.
The wealthy boy pointed to this one with a gleeful utterance. The wealthy father asked the kennel boss to open the cage, and with keys a-jangling, the kennel boss did so.
Observing this, the mother felt better about their prospects for a happy resolution. Luck is on our side, she thought. The injured parties are lovers of man.
Then her son exclaimed, pointing to the wealthy boy, “I know him!”
“Where do you know him from?” asked the mother.
“From the field. He has three singing mans. He is my friend.”
“What were you doing at the field after I told you not to go back there? Man-fighting again, after I told you not to?”
“Yes, Mother,” the boy quietly admitted.
“Well,” she said, “maybe it will work out.”
The boy and his mother watched as the kennel boss removed the selected man from its cage, leashed it, and filled out the forms and had the father of the wealthy boy sign in various places. To complete the transaction, there was an exchange of silver.
“I just love mans,” they heard the wealthy father say with a laugh. “And we already have so many of them at home.”
The mother and the boy waited patiently, not wanting to behave impertinently, and so it surprised them when suddenly the wealthy boy and his father announced their thanks to the kennel boss and then exited the kennel without a word to them.
The mother stiffened at the offense. “What is going on?”
Without acknowledging her, the kennel boss swept the entire kennel floor with a short-whiskered broom while humming an ugly tune before ambling over to the main cage, unlocking it, and unceremoniously expelling their female man.
The boy took his female man into his arms. She was happy to be out of the cage and happy to be hugged.
The kennel boss said to the mother as she signed the release form in the designated places, “His boy says he is a friend of your boy, so no harm done. It was only a scratch anyway. But they do have a few demands. You will pay to have the latch on their door repaired, or they will have her thumbs removed. You will build her a proper kennel with a proper lock to keep her at home — a proper lock which they will inspect upon completion, or they will have her thumbs removed. Finally, you will surrender the baby man — or mans — as soon as it, or they, are born.”
The boy, hugging his female man, glanced up and echoed, “Baby man?”
“What baby man?” the mother asked sharply.
The kennel boss had refilled his cup and now he took a long slurping sip from it, gurgled, and gave the stuff caught in his teeth another good suck through. “Your man is pregnant, in case you didn’t notice. As I told you, they are only good for two things, hunting and giving birth. She has been sneaking out of your yard to take company with one of their mans. Now she is pregnant and her litter belongs to them,” he proclaimed airily.
The mother seethed. “That is the very height of cruelty to mans! I will not sign to have her give up her child!”
“But you have already signed, Madam Pinhead Oaf!” taunted the kennel boss, snatching up the papers the mother had signed and waving them in her face.
When she lunged for them, he pushed them into a drawer, locked it, and coolly ordered her and the boy to take their man and leave.
3
A Proper Kennel
The sermon was about loving all creatures great and small, and the boy, who usually fidgeted in church, listened today with attentiveness to the sacred speaker’s words. It seemed to the boy that the sacred speaker, who was also his history teacher at school, was addressing the message especially to him as they kept making eye contact.
“And now we come to the mans,” spake the sacred speaker. “Of all great nature’s creatures, he is the most like us in appearance and habit. There are those among us who say that the mans are related to us. In truth, they are like unto us in appearance. Their life span is but a third of ours, but the stages they go through are identical to those that we go through. Like us, they are hunters. Left on their own in the wilds, they dominate the other creatures, hunting and harvesting them as they see fit. They can use simple tools. They can build shelter, of a sort. Indeed, some among the educated say that mans are related to us. Some go so far as to speculate that we are descended from them. That they are an unevolved form of us. Or that from the mixing of their blood and angels’, came we. I don’t know anything about that. I know only that great scripture says that we have dominion over them as we have dominion over all beasts. This does not mean that we are to abuse and mistreat them. This means that we must be wise stewards of the land and all the creatures in it. We must not abuse them when they are our pets. We must not overhunt them in the wild. We must see to it that their natural habitats in our forests and our swamps, in our seas and our mountains, in our deserts and our frozen places, are protected from overhunting and from the encroachment of our civilizations. The other day, I took my son on an adventure to the southernmost end of our continent, just before the place where the great sea abuts the sandy shore and to the west where flows the great river of grass. And we did walk in our water shoes to the very end of our civilization where the land becomes more water than soil. We were in the swamp of the crocodilians and the mans. We were in the swamp that is named the Eternal Grass. There were birds aplenty, amazing aviators and hunters these. Wading with legs like long reeds in deep water, these feathered fowl of the water and of the air hunted with long snakelike necks and sharp swordlike beaks the abundance of fish swimming in schools around their submerged feet. There were enormous turtles there with leathern shells and varicolored faces, sunning themselves on the rocks as they watched the hunting of the birds. There were creeping creatures, furry rodents scurrying up the trees and slithery snakes making their way through the grasses. There lurked by the hundreds the large somber scavengers in black, the hunchbacked and hooked-face vultures. And there were other birds, hundreds of other birds, flitting through the sunlit skies, loudly singing their various songs, their boisterous cacophony of joy — joy at being alive — alive, yes, alive and happy to be in that moment right then and there in that holy tabernacle of nature. In this wet place, in this place of water and soil and grass, life abounded in all its diversity. We watched from a safe distance and with respectful caution the lesser masters of the food chain of that region, the proud and awful crocodilians, the giant swamp lizards, the le-gators. Among all the creatures that walk on land or swim in sea, the le-gator possesses the most powerful bite. We were warned by the guide that the le-gator will eat anything that it can catch, including my son and myself if we were not careful. And while it looks slow and ungainly as it drags its large bulk out of the swamp to sun itself on the shore, we were cautioned that it has amazing and surprising speed, which was demonstrated when a le-gator, at rest on the shore, accelerated suddenly and caught and ate a large white-feathered bird which had been standing a seemingly safe dozen or so hla-cubits away. When the le-gator finished its feathern meal, it roared loudly, a roar that set all winged creatures to flight, and it slunk its bulk back into the water and swam out to the middle of the pond, its eyes and nostrils the only parts of its dragon-serpent body above the waterline. The guide explained to us that the le-gator, which was once hunted almost to extinction by our kind, is now plenteous again in the swamplands of the Eternal Grass after strict laws prevented hunting and poaching of the magnificent beast. The le-gator, as powerful and ferocious as it is, has but one enemy in nature, and that enemy is man. But where is man, the greater master of the food chain? my son and I wondered as we watched the great le-gator’s leisurely swim. Then the guide cried, Look over there! as they burst through the trees — about a dozen of them — carrying long sticks sharpened on stone. These were not the mans that we have as pets. These were not the mans that we see in zoos or who perform for us at our circuses and festivals. These were feral mans — wild mans in their natural environment — with their lithe, naked little bodies covered over in dirt and mud. The stench of them reached foully across the pond to us, and we had to put our hands over our nostrils. They were the breed with lidless eyes and pale skin, though it was hard to judge the skin pigmentation with all of that dirt and filth on it. One of them had a length of braided twine, which he flung with perfect skill and aim around the neck of the great swimming le-gator that had just devoured the bird. As a team they hauled the le-gator up onto the shore — it took all of them pulling on the braided twine, for this le-gator was a monstrous creature that was easily the size of any three of them put together — and it fought against their makeshift rope, twisting and turning, whipping its great tail frantically, and snapping its mighty jaws dangerously. But there were no casualties of the swamp mans that day, as the nimble creatures danced out of the way of both whipping tail and snapping jaws. They stabbed him many times with the pointed sticks, and we watched in awe as the mighty le-gator began to weaken. Now the le-gator, in desperation, turned his face toward the swamp again, hoping to escape into the safety of the water. His legs clawed the muddy shore helplessly. The mans stabbed him a few times more with the sharpened sticks, and the le-gator with a final, loud roar yielded his life to death. Briefly did they look down upon his body with a kind of quiet reverence, and then they dragged it into the forest and were gone. Man is indeed dangerous in his beauty, invention, and skill. Among beasts, he sits at the top of the food chain. He is a top predator, as are we. But unlike us, man is not wasteful. He does not eat more than he needs. He does not hunt for sport or industry. He gives back to nature as much as he takes. He is at one with his environment.”