Animal Factory

by Philip Caveney

  ‘What will you do with them now?’ Ralph asked Mr Morton.

  ‘Oh, we’ll rear them,’ he assured him. ‘It’ll cost a few bob but we’ll do whatever it takes. It’ll be good for us in the long run. Those are pedigree animals. They’ll be worth a small fortune when they’re weaned. We’ll be able to sell ‘em.’ He looked down at Ralph. ‘You’ll have to help them, though. You’re the nearest thing to a father figure they’re going to find around here.’

  ‘Me?’ murmured Ralph. ‘But. . . I’m not much more than a pup myself.’

  ‘Even so. . . these little fellows are going to need somebody to look up to. And I can’t ask Fred, he’s too old to take on something like that.’

  Ralph heard a soft noise behind him and turning, he saw that Fred had entered the barn and was looking at him curiously, as though wondering what he was going to say. His eyes implored Ralph to say no, but he must have realised that the younger dog had just been asked a favour by a Tall One and that he was hardly in a position to refuse it.

  Ralph gazed up at Mr Morton and thrust all his worries aside. ‘You can depend on me,’ he told him. “I’ll watch out for them.’

  Chapter Seven

  The Brood

  And so it came about that Ralph became the Dobermans minder. Fred was disgusted with him, but as Ralph pointed out, time and time again, it was hardly his fault.. Farmer Morton had asked him to take on the role and he really didn’t see how he could refuse to do it.

  Of course, at first the pups were no real problem. They spent their first few weeks of life in the warmth and safety of the barn. Several times a day, Agnes would go out to them and feed them special formula powdered milk. Whenever possible, Ralph would lie by the entrance of the stalls and watch the proceedings. He thought the pups were adorable, so small and helpless, their eyes screwed shut against the world, their little mouths always eager for the taste of warm milk.

  Farmer Morton had removed their mother’s body in the dead of night and had replaced it with an old sack stuffed with straw and it was this that they cuddled up to. At first Agnes worried that they were not going to survive, especially the runt who was so weak and helpless he had to be given double the rations of his brothers and sisters, but after a few days when it seemed like they were going to lose him, he rallied and became a little stronger. The pups’ eyes opened and they began to fight with each other, tumbling around in the straw and the runt always had to be rescued from underneath the crush of his bigger, stronger siblings.

  Soon, they got themselves up onto their legs and started to explore and that was when Ralph really had his work cut out, because it seemed that they were always getting into mischief. He would find them rooting around in the sacks of grain stored in the barn, or he would catch them running riot near the chicken run, or he would find them in the Morton’s kitchen, chewing an item of clothing or ripping Farmer Morton’s daily newspaper to shreds.

  One day, poor Fred was enjoying a nap in his kennel when a couple of the bolder puppies crept in through the open doorway and more from curiosity than spite, buried their sharp little teeth in his tail. Fred woke with a yelp of pain and surprise, leapt up and bashed his head against the roof of the kennel. The resulting barks and howls had the whole farmyard in an uproar and it took some persuasion on Ralph’s part to stop Fred from exacting brutal revenge on the terrified pups.

  ‘They’re pests, those puppies!’ bellowed Fred angrily. ‘Somebody should teach them a lesson!’

  ‘I’ll have a word with them,’ Ralph promised him. He did, but it didn’t do much good. There was a reckless quality about the pups; they seemed to enjoy causing mischief wherever they went and this was not the only occasion when Fred bore the brunt of their high spirits.

  The old sheepdog tried complaining to Farmer Morton, but his complaints fell on deaf ears. Farmer Morton seemed to be as mad about the newcomers as Ralph was. From the beginning he had taken a great interest in them, praising their regal looks and their aggressive natures. When they were just a few days old, he told Ralph that he intended to ‘dock’ the pups’ tails. This was the custom with Dobermans, he explained, and made them worth more money. As Ralph watched, horrified, he had tied pieces of string very tightly around the bases of the puppy’s tails and after a day or so, the tails had simply dropped off. Ralph thought it was horrible to see the little creatures treated in such a brutal fashion, but he could say nothing and the pups seemed to suffer no ill effects from their rough treatment.

  Farmer Morton began to spend every minute of his spare time with the pups. His promise to sell them when they were weaned was soon forgotten, and many times Ralph would creep into the barn to find him playing with them, tumbling about in the straw like a little boy.

  Agnes was not quite so keen. The pups were very destructive and as their teeth began to grow they had the annoying habit of chewing at anything they could find, including the legs of the kitchen chairs, which had belonged to Agnes’s mother. Whenever the pups disgraced themselves it was Ralph who got shouted at, but he could not keep an eye on them round the clock and it was inevitable that sometimes bad things would happen. The Runt seemed to be the worst offender. While his brothers and sisters were very quickly housetrained, he just couldn’t seem to get the hang of it and was forever having little ‘accidents’ on the kitchen floor.

  Around this time, Farmer Morton chose names for the pups, odd-sounding names that he claimed were appropriate for Dobermans. He called them Rudy, Fritz, Jakob, Manfred, Eva, Brigit and Anna. And the runt he named Kurt.

  ‘Why would you give them funny old names like that?’ complained Agnes, one time when the Mortons and Ralph were gathered in the barn with the pups. ‘How is a soul supposed to remember them?’

  ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ Farmer Morton assured her.

  ‘Yes, but honestly! Calling the runt Kurt. The toughest name of the lot, and him almost afraid of his own shadow!’

  This was true. While Kurt’s brothers and sisters were fearless, their smaller brother was the shy and nervous type and though he tried really hard to fit in with their knockabout ways, it was always he who had to be rescued when a game of rough and tumble got out of hand. Ralph took extra special care to keep an eye out for him.

  But of course, he couldn’t always be there in time to prevent disaster. One morning the pups were chasing each other around the yard when they spotted Sheba the cat, who was enjoying a nap on one of the farmhouse window ledges. Ralph had told the pups again and again that they were not to bother Sheba, but the instruction was forgotten at the very first sight of her and their animal instincts aroused, the pups sent up a series of excited barks and chased towards her. Sheba woke in a panic and took off at top speed with all eight pups in hot pursuit. Ralph, emerging from the barn, saw them heading out of the farmyard and set off after them, shouting at them to leave Sheba alone.

  The chase took them towards the chicken run and Sheba, sensing a possible hiding place, shot straight through the open gates. She raced up the ramp of one of the hen houses and in through the small doorway. Most of the pups were too big to fit through the opening, but Kurt could just about manage it and, encouraged by the shouting and urging of his brothers and sisters, and no doubt wanting to prove to them that he could be just as fearless as them, he went in, unaware that Sheba had shot straight out through one of the pop holes on the far side of the coop.

  As Ralph came up to the Dobermans there was a terrible commotion from within the coop, the furious squealing of chickens and the flapping of many wings. Ralph was too big to fit through the doorway himself and could only push his head in through the hole, but when he did, he was greeted by a blizzard of feathers and the frantic beaks of scores of chickens, who, having been woken from their slumbers had gone into a wild frenzy and were pecking furiously at anything that came near them. Ralph withdrew his head with a yelp of pain as a beak pinched his nose and he couldn’t help but think about Fred’s dream and the furious beaks of the ravens. And then, a
midst the commotion inside the coop, he made out a different sound – the terrified yelping of Kurt, lost in the midst of a blizzard of flapping wings and clawing feet.

  Kurt’s brothers and sisters seemed to find this hilarious. They started shouting sarcastic comments in through the opening.

  ‘Hurry up and lay an egg, Kurt,’ yelled Fritz, the biggest and toughest of the Dobermans. ‘Farmer Morton is waiting for his breakfast!’

  ‘Yes!’ howled Anna. ‘We’ll make a good little chicken of you yet!’

  Inside, Kurt’s yelping rose to a frenzy as he blundered about, trying to find a way out.

  ‘They’re killing me!’ he shrieked. “They’re going to peck me to death!’

  This caused gales of laughter from the others.

  ‘Poor little Kurt!’ cried Elsa. ‘Hen-pecked already!’

  Ralph didn’t know what to do but spotted Henrietta coming towards the coop and he urged her to go inside to rescue Kurt. She made her way in without hesitation, shouting to her sisters to calm down.

  ‘It’s all right, girls,’ she assured them. ‘It was just an accident, calm down, calm down!’

  Eventually she was able to nudge Kurt back towards the exit, but by now he was hysterical, yelping and crying. He stumbled out into the daylight and Ralph saw that he was plastered from head to foot in egg yolk and bits of broken shell. The effect did look rather comical and he couldn’t stop himself from laughing with the others, but Kurt clearly didn’t find the incident at all amusing. He stood at the top of the wooden ramp, staring down at the others, his entire body shaking.

  ‘What’s the matter, Kurt?’ mocked Fritz. ‘Did the nasty chickens beat you up? Did they frighten you?”

  “Leave him alone,’ said Henrietta, as she emerged from the coop behind Kurt. ‘Can’t you see he’s had a bad scare?’ She moved to put a wing protectively around him, but he turned on her, his teeth bared. He lunged towards her and she had to flap madly away from him to avoid being bitten.

  ‘I’m not scared!’ he howled. ‘How dare you say I am?’

  His violent reaction to Henrietta’s warm words shocked Ralph, who had never seen Kurt lose his temper before, but it just made the other Dobermans laugh all the more and Kurt had no option but to slink back to the barn with his siblings’ mocking voices ringing in his ears.

  Ralph went across to Henrietta who was settling her ruffled feathers and staring after Kurt with an outraged expression on her face.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ralph asked her.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘But whatever got into young Kurt? I was only trying to help him.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ralph. ‘I think he was just feeling a bit embarrassed.’ He looked across at the other dogs who were still chuckling and passing comments amongst themselves. ‘Now don’t you lot go teasing him over this,’ he warned them. ‘You know he’s sensitive.’ None of them gave him an answer but trooped away, looking for more mischief to cause.

  And they didn’t let the matter rest there, but took every opportunity to tease poor Kurt about his misadventure. So much so that for a while he stopped hanging around with them and took to brooding by himself in the hay barn.

  That was where Ralph discovered him one day, lying in the straw, staring at the wall in front of him as though he could see something written there.

  ‘Kurt, what are you doing in here by yourself?’ Ralph asked him.

  Kurt lifted his head and surveyed the sheepdog sullenly. ‘I’m thinking,’ he said moodily.

  ‘About what?’ asked Ralph, settling himself down beside the pup.

  ‘About a lot of things. I’m wondering why I’m so different to my brothers and sisters. Why they seem to think that everything I do is silly and worthless. And mostly, I’m wondering why the chickens hate me so much.’

  Ralph stared at Kurt in amazement. While he could accept that there might be some truth in the first two statements, he couldn’t for the life of him think why Kurt should have arrived at the third one.

  ‘The chickens?’ he cried. ‘They don’t hate you.’

  ‘Of course they do! Why else would they have laid that trap for me? Why else would they lure me into their coop so they could attack me?’

  Ralph couldn’t believe his ears. ‘That’s not what happened!’ he protested. ‘It wasn’t planned. As I recall, you and the others were chasing Sheba.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. But the chickens have their little helpers, don’t they? Sheba was just the bait that lured me into the trap.’

  ‘What nonsense! It was an accident.’

  ‘Really? You’ll be telling me next that the chickens didn’t peck at my eyes, trying to blind me, and that they didn’t hurl their eggs at me and shriek insults.’

  ‘That might be how it seemed to you but . . . you were scared, confused. And believe me, the chickens were just as frightened as you were. That’s why I sent Henrietta in to help you.’

  Now Kurt looked disgusted. ‘Don’t mention her name,’ he growled. ‘Isn’t she just the slyest of the lot? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was the ringleader behind the ambush.’

  Now Ralph really was annoyed. ‘You mustn’t say things like that about Henrietta. Ask anyone on the farm. She’s the sweetest, most good-natured creature here. You really couldn’t ask for a nicer hen.’

  ‘Oh yes, she has everyone fooled,’ muttered Kurt. ‘But not me.’

  Ralph didn’t know what to make of this. Kurt was just a pup, yet he seemed to be speaking with a bitterness that would not have disgraced a hard-bitten old timer like Fred.

  ‘I can’t let you go on saying such things about Henrietta,’ said Ralph. ‘When you were new-born, I swore to Farmer Morton that I would look after you and I think spiritual guidance is just as important as your physical well-being. To think such thoughts . . . your mother would be horrified if she knew.’

  Kurt looked up at Ralph with interest. ‘Tell me about my mother,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ said Ralph, ‘which, I’m afraid, isn’t very much.’

  And he told Kurt about the unexpected appearance of the black dog and everything that had happened up to her death, though he didn’t mention the fact that it was Kurt’s difficult birth that had killed her. He thought that would be too much for the youngster to have to think about.

  ‘What was she like, my mother?’ asked Kurt and Ralph understood the pup’s feelings. After all, it wasn’t so very long since he had been taken away from his own mother.

  ‘She seemed nice enough,’ he lied, although his memory of the black dog was of a creature so secretive and so wracked with pain that she could only snap and snarl her comments.

  ‘And you say she’d been beaten? By who?’

  ‘I don’t know. A Tall One, I suppose. But Farmer Morton didn’t know of anyone who would be so cruel to a dog around these parts, so we must assume that your mother had travelled a long way.’

  Kurt laughed at that and it was not a very pleasant laugh. ‘That’s a good one,’ he said. ‘Farmer Morton doesn’t know of anyone who would be cruel to a dog? And yet, am I mistaken in thinking that I and my brothers and sisters once had tails?’

  Ralph looked at Kurt in alarm. ‘You . . . remember that?’ he cried. ‘But . . . you were only a few days old.’

  Kurt nodded. ‘There is nothing wrong with my memory. I asked the others about it once, but they didn’t remember a thing. I can still recall the pain of it. Hardly a kind act, was it, to deprive us of our tails?’

  ‘It’s a traditional thing,’ said Ralph, though he remembered that he himself had been appalled when the docking had been performed. ‘It . . . it’s something to do with your breed. Farmer Morton wanted you to look your best. He’s very fond of you.’

  ‘Is he now?’ asked Kurt. ‘Hmm. I notice he didn’t dock your tail. Or Fred’s, for that matter.’

  ‘Er. . . no, but then . . . we’re not Dobermans, are we?’

  ‘No,’ said Kurt. ‘You’re something qui
te different.’

  ‘Look,’ said Ralph, trying to sound cheerful. ‘It’s pointless to sit around brooding on such matters. Whether it’s right or wrong, it was a Tall One that did it and you know that we must accept what they do. It is the way of things.’

  ‘That’s the excuse that’s always used. ‘The way of things.’ As if nothing can ever be changed.’

  Ralph felt that he had heard enough complaining for one day. ‘Now look, Kurt, it’s lovely and sunny outside, why don’t you come out and play with your brothers and sisters?’

  ‘I’ve had enough of games,’ said Kurt. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather go on with my thinking.’

  Ralph sighed. He did not like this new development one little bit. But he could see that Kurt was intent on staying right where he was, so he got up and moved quietly towards the doors. ‘We’ll be out in the yard if you change your mind,’ he said.

  But Kurt didn’t join them that day.

  Chapter Eight

  Growing Pains

  The pups grew very quickly. By the time their first Christmas came around, they were nearly as big as Ralph, and only a few months into the New Year they had outgrown him. If it had been difficult to control them before, now it was impossible. Many times his polite entreaties for them to stop doing something mischievous were met by cruel comments or even bared teeth and warning growls that told him he’d do better to mind his own business.

  After his short absence from his brothers and sisters, Kurt came back to the fold, but Ralph noticed that he had changed in many ways. Now that he was bigger, he had a tendency to bully the other farmyard animals, especially the chickens. If one of them got in his way, he would shoo them off with loud barks and bared teeth. But despite this aggressive quality it quickly became clear that he was much more intelligent than his siblings. He seemed to have opinions about everything that happened on the farm and his ideas showed a wisdom that went way beyond his tender years. Because of this the other Dobermans started to take more notice of him and it was not long before they had begun to treat him with a lot more respect than they had shown when he was known merely as ‘The Runt’. None of them would have dreamed of calling him that now.