THE HOUND, THE HARE, AND THE HIPPO

There once lived a very large gray and white hare who would never admit it but all of his friends agreed, had a big drinking problem. His owner, a sleek German Shepherd with a feisty temperament, always looked the other way at the hare's indiscretion and would even give him a little encouraging pat on the posterior and, not wanting to interrupt whatever it was that got his best breeder off, actually enjoyed watching the hare's antics when the booze began to flow. Not only that but he would also curtly snarl and nip away at anyone who even suggested that his prize rabbit was in the least bit out of line. You see, he himself liked to take a nip or two and they always say what's fit for the goose is fit for the gander.

Although they admired his enterprising nature, some folks said they thought the hound was a bit of a voyeur, but they never said it to his face, not being willing to risk being bitten over what they knew was merely a gossipy opinion and not necessarily a fact at all and anyway there were always some rather private things going on about the farm that they themselves liked to take a gander at. (Perhaps that last phrase might help you to laugh at the pun about the goose if you hadn't already gotten it.)

Now, one day a very prudish, tee totaling hippopotamus whom the other hippos had nick-named Saint Augustine for his pious pretension, mistakenly happened to rumble, I suppose you could say "ramble" but it was really more of a "rumble," into the farmyard grounds (you can probably guess that the farm was in Africa), and made a little sort of "tsk-tsk-tsk" sound at the sight of the totally inebriated hare who happened to be right in the middle of singing his very favorite song. Since a good shepherd always takes care of his flock, that was all it took for him to start tearing into the hippo, first with very sharp words and then when that didn't seem to do much good, at the hippo's backside with even sharper teeth.

You may think that a hippo could brush a dog off just like that but not in this case! The hippo, being on the young side, had only recently gotten a little tail and he valued keeping it so he went scurrying off, whimpering something that sounded like "Hang the fang!" but I'm not really sure what it was or even what it meant.

Moral:

When you're confronting a drunkard and not sure of your grounds, be careful what you say about the hare of the dog that bit you.

© 2004__Muldoon Elder

Editor's note: After exhaustive research we have determined that the expression "Hang the fang!" symbolized a cry against Baetylus (or sometimes called Omphalos if you happened to be Greek) or for that matter against anyone that misbehaves after getting stoned no matter how sacred the source. Check it out on Wikipedia if you don't believe us. However, this is only true when the expression is followed by an exclamation mark, rather like the way "chapeau," the French word for hat, has the entirely different meaning of "fantastic!" or "marvelous!" when it is followed by an exclamation mark.