(incident occurred too late for ANIMALS blog so mentally shoehorn it into POLITICS blg by means of METAPHORICALISM plz thx)
SCENE: MY PARENTS’ HOUSE: My old room overlooks the neighbours’ backyard. They have a small black-and-white terrier. Yesterday it was busily guarding its masters and their property against ALLCOMERS when it spied a BUMBLEBEE crawling across the concrete, fooled by the early warm and banjaxed i spect by the cool that followed.
OK, so most of us have watched a cat playing with mouse/bird/spider etc, and been perhaps distressed by the deliberate playful meanness on display. The terrier by contrast had so convinced himself of the GRAND NOBLE FEARLESS PURPOSE of his defence against the bumblebee that he had become frightened of actually touching it (in v.small dogbrane “i am so brave HURRAH” => “it is therefore so mighty ULP”): time and again, he hurled himself at the tiny round slowly crawling object, only – at the last split-second – to twist sharply and awkwardly away; he would make as if to catch it in his mouth and flinch just before he did so. This demented little ballet went on for ages, in tremendous, ceaseless earnestness (and silence, but for a terrier he is very unusually quiet): the dog relentless but secretly terrified, the bumblebee apparently unaware of the dog.
I *think* in the end he did squish it, kinda by mistake – but it may have finally flown (or just walked) away, and what i tht wz the slain corpse wz just some fluff or dirt.