Loki the Lockdown Dog

Balls

10. Balls

The next few days were uneventful and I have little to report on their passage.

Then came the incident with the ball.... It wasn't really my fault. I mean, Benedict was the first person who got me a ball to play with, after all. We'd started playing a great game where I'd drop the ball for Benedict, so he could practice bending over and throwing it, and I'd fetch it for him, so he could do it once more. He really liked throwing it, so I did it over and over again, just to please him - and give him a bit of exercise. For I'd noticed that over lockdown, with the tinned and microwaved foods he was eating, he'd started packing on the pounds, so he now had a considerable paunch. I tried dropping the ball further and further away from him, so he could practice running to get it as well, but he didn't seem to like that game. Then, wonder of wonders, a man with a stick whacked a little white ball, which landed right by us and careered further down the hill over the short green grass. This seemed an even better game than playing with Benedict, because the man could hit the ball so much further with his stick! I ran as fast as I could after the ball, and even before it stopped I picked it up in my mouth. The man appeared to be really happy about this, because he was waving his stick in the air and shouting at me. I knew just how pleased he'd be if I ran all the way back up the hill with the ball, so he could hit it all over again. I figured he'd be delighted to have his ball back, without having to climb all the way down and then up the hill again. As I got nearer to him, he didn't look that pleased at all, and was shouting at me, and brandishing his shiny stick in a threatening manner.

"You little git. Come here so I can wallop you," he said. I then realised that he was talking to the ball, so I trotted happily up to him and dropped it just a metre or so short of where he stood. I thought he would just whack it again, but instead he lunged at me with his stick, and nearly hit me on the head. I grabbed his ball and danced around him in circles, just out of reach. This served only to make him angrier and angrier, and he started using words I didn't understand, but which didn't sound at all nice. Even worse than git, whatever that meant. I dropped his ball, so at least he could hit it again, which I thought might cheer him up. When I got back to Benedict, he was laughing and laughing, and bent over double in mirth. Well I hadn't seen him laugh like that for a while, so that was a bit of a result.

"He's a golfer, Loki!" I looked blankly at him, raising an eyebrow. I wondered if golfer was a term of abuse like git. "It's a game called golf. The idea is to hit the ball round the green bits in as few shots as possible. You taking his ball back, when he'd just done a great shot, was bound to upset him. You really must leave the white balls alone."

There he was again, treating me like an intelligent being, which pleased me no end, and I made a decision to leave the white balls well alone from then on.

I ran up to the golfer when he reached us, and span and jumped appealingly in front of him. He just shook his fist at Benedict and I.

"If I catch your dog anywhere near my ball again, I'll have him shot."

"You touch my dog, and I'll have you shot," said Benedict, testily. "I'm very sorry he picked up your ball. I'm sure he won't do it again."

Benedict turned on his heel and marched off up the hill with me bouncing along next to him.

At the top of the hill I saw rabbits who'd ventured away from the edge of the brambles onto the short green grass, which I now realised was all part of the golfers' domain. My instinct to chase the rabbits kicked in before my conscious brain could even think, and I was flat out running before you could say jackrabbit. I easily gained on them, with my long legs at full stretch and my spine flexing then extending like butterfly wings. My lungs drank in the sweet spring air. One of the rabbits was the lone black rabbit I'd sometimes seen on my walks, and I cut inside him to prevent his disappearance back into the undergrowth. I pulled up alongside him, and he looked over at me. The urge to grab him and crush him rose up in some ancient, reptilian part of my brain, and my jaws opened in preparation. Somehow I managed to over-ride this drive and just eased off on my speed so we ran neck and neck. Trying a new tactic, the rabbit slammed on his brakes, digging into the soft earth with his front paws so that his back legs came up one either side of his long ears, as he slid along on his backside. I performed what I consider to be a more elegant manoeuvre, sliding on all four outstretched legs, ploughing up four lines of grass as I did so.

As we slid along in parallel, I caught him looking over at me, surely wondering if one of his next breaths might be his last.

"I'm only playing," I said. "I won't hurt you. I'm just enjoying the chase." To my amazement I found that I was also fluent in Rabbit!

Blackrabbit seemed to be in shock, so that when we both finally slid to a stop, he made no further efforts to escape. He just froze in his tracks.

"Honestly," I said. "I've already had breakfast."

"You speak Rabbit?" he said. "That's just weird. And a lurcher that won't try and eat me? That's most unusual, to say the very least."

Thinking me distracted, he made a break for the nearest section of bracken. Just to show him that I could catch him if I wanted to, I fled after him as fast as my feet would carry me, and pulled up level with him, just before he disappeared into the safety of the branches and the sharp thorns of the brambles.

From the safety of the herbage he said, "But you're with a human, and they really can't be trusted."

"Benedict is lovely to me. Humans are OK once you get to know them."

"Ha! Well that might be the humans you know. Did you know it's compulsory to control rabbits on any land? They shoot us, gas us, trap us and snare us, and that's all encouraged by the Government."

"The Government are idiots," I replied, trying to sound knowledgeable on the issue. In truth, this was the first I'd heard about it, and I was just parroting what Benedict had said.

"We dig holes in their precious grass, and then their little white ball doesn't sit right for their game of golf – so they just kill us."

I thought back to the angry golfer, but I just couldn't believe this rabbit – not without further evidence. Surely the Government wasn't that cruel and stupid!

"I'll see you again, rabbit," I said, as I turned and trotted back to Benedict, trying to put what he'd told me out of my mind. What I couldn't help thinking about was the flood of Rabbit lingo that had come from my mouth. The words just appeared in my brain as if from nowhere, just as they did with Squirrel. I had to work a lot harder for Human words. I think that is partly because there arejust so many more words - so many in fact that they've run out and use the same word for several different things. And partly perhaps because animals discuss the common ground we walk upon? We speak of the natural world, red in tooth and claw, although we see it from our own peculiar vantage points. Human language takes in a whole bevvy of subjects that are just plain irrelevant for animals, and it is this complexity and apparent pointlessness,that foxes me. I wondered out loud whether there were other languages of which I was master. As usual, Benedict seemed to have no idea what I was saying.