The Parade

I am the accidental grand marshal in a daily parade of wild dogs,  all but one male, and each having brought along his personal instrument, so to speak, to march intimately at the tail of the big fat brown dog, who marches along behind me pretending to be oblivious to her retinue. They are a shaggy, ragged, disorderly band, an unseemly flash mob, a coalition of bitter enemies, adversaries according to sex and breed, yet united in a single purpose, that being to impregnate the big fat brown dog.  They are brown, white, black, and all shades in between. They are small and large, long and short. They are quick-witted, slow-witted, and nit-witted. Cars honk at these dogs, drivers shake a fist, children on motorbikes shriek, neighbors close their gates, and the woman who sells fruit drinks at the little stand up the street, seeing that the band has grown from 2 to 10 in number, exclaims "Aduh!" Some of the dogs get bored along the route, or distracted, or forget what they were up to. A few reach my house at the end of the route, and here they argue and pose, bare their teeth and exchange insults, but things rarely come to a full fledged fistfight, the preferred form of combat being to tell your opponent in fearsome detail what you're going to do to him if you feel like it. And then at some point, these most patient and persistent of suitors will realize that their object, their goal--i.e. the big fat brown dog--has slipped away behind the blood-red curtain of their rage and is now nowhere to be seen. Therefore, each will line up before the grand marshal to receive a cookie, and then will head on home. Tomorrow is another day.