A Fable

At first, Daniel could not believe that his dog, Gunther, could speak.  No, not like another dog speaks, such as “yap yap,” but actual words, whined out, the way dogs do when they whine.  Perhaps you have heard such whining.

At first Gunther’s speech sounded like “rrrrrrrroooooooorrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmm.”  Plus, whistles and variations of that.

Until Gunther said, “mmmmmmaaaaaamaaaaaa.”

“Mama,” Daniel said.  “Wow.” Daniel responded by giving Gunther one of the chewy chicken-flavor treats that he kept in his coat pocket.  Daniel had previously rewarded Gunther only for pooping outdoors.  Daniel certainly didn’t expect human-sounding verbiage from his dog.

Daniel kept the treats in the plastic, zip-lock, self-closing pouch, at the ready, in case Gunther said anything further.  Well, he did.

“Arrrrrowww,” said Gunther, speaking of the projectile from a bow.  Often Gunther put sort of a whistling sound into his speech, but I don’t know how to tell you about that here.

One spring day, when Gunther was more mature and able to speak much clearer English, Daniel and he hiked in the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains.  They encountered a damned large grizzly.  Gunther, believing that he was bigger and stronger than any other creature, launched himself with great force toward the bear.  The bear responded by opening his huge mouth, dripping with saliva, festooned top and bottom with sharp teeth.

The bear, as you might guess, swallowed Gunther whole.  If the bear had bitten Gunther in two, this fable would be over and you would have to turn off the light and go to sleep.

But the fable is not over.  Gunther loved to burrow, so he dug his way down the bear’s esophagus to his stomach, which was half-full of roots and grubs.  Gunther would have made it into the bear’s duodenum, but the passage was too small, so Gunther turned around and faced upward, toward the bear’s mouth.

The bear, meanwhile, had run away from Daniel, carrying Gunther in his stomach.  Daniel started to cry, then he headed back down the trail.

Gunther barked from inside the bear.  He also whined, “Maaamaaaa.”  And whined, “No arrow.”

Daniel, meanwhile, had reported to the Forest Service Ranger that a grizzly had eaten his dog.

The Rangers soon located the great bear and prepared to shoot the bear with a dart to make it sleep.  However, the Rangers heard Gunther.  They thought the bear was crying for its mama.  Also, pleading for them to not shoot the dart.  None of them had ever heard a bear talk before.

The bear ended up being trapped alive and put on display in a menagerie so that other people could hear it ask for its mama.  Nobody ever suspected that Gunther was inside the bear’s belly.  Eventually Gunther died and was digested.  Of course the bear stopped talking, but nobody was surprised by that.

Moral:  One can be too brave and clever for one’s good.