love makes the world go round

There were only two important things in Ben’s life, one was eating and the other sleeping. In his youth he had done everything expected of him. He diligently chased old men on bicycles, he’d embarrassed his owner by mating in the street and he’d christened every carpet his patient long suffering master had purchased.
Now the time for chasing nubile young bitches had passed. Now old men could cycle past in complete safety. Now the only thing of interest in the street was the occasional lamppost.
However Ben did have one thing of great interest outside the house. One night as he lay on the grass he happened to look up he’d noticed the large white ball in the sky. He’d seen it before but never had it seemed so beautiful. All at once he felt the urge to tell everyone of its beauty, so he opened his mouth and sang to it. Ben was proud of his singing voice, it was deep full throated and once he started to sing it was almost impossible to stop him. So he sang or at least that’s what he thought he was doing.
From the inside of the house came a voice of concern.
“For Christ’ sake what’s wrong with that dog. Has it been run over? It’s making an awful racket!!”
A nasty impatient voice replied,” Darn the dog it’s my turn and I’m buying Fleet Street.”
Ben took no notice of the silly conversations of humans. Everybody knew the hairless apes were only there to serve dog-kind!
Any dog who took them seriously should be slung wholesale out of the kennel club and his doggy chews snapped before him.
Importantly he carried on with his musical appreciation of the moon one dog eared ear upright in salute to the celestial body whilst the other rested against the side of his head awaiting its turn.
Ben realised just what a fine voice he had, he tried for a yet higher note, but years of barking at the postman had taken its tole. He tried and failed miserably to overcome that greatest of vocal targets a doggy top “C” what had started as his most glorious song a really good howl culminated in a miserable flat yelp not worthy of the mangiest alley dog.
“ For heavens sake get off your backside and go and see to him man!” Came the demanding voice of his mistress.
“Oh yes”, came the suspicious response, “do you think I was born yesterday. I’ll go out and when I return there’ll be a hotel on Mayfair. You go out and get the bloody dogl.”
“Hell will freeze over before I do!” came the assertive reply, “for ten rotten years, you’ve told me what to do! Now you can get off your fat ass and fetch the dog in.”
“He’s your bloody dog you get him, I wanted the stacking system not a damn dog remember?” retorted his master.
“You are the pits, we bought him because of the burglaries, what were we supposed to do, put a sign on the gate beware of the stereo system!”
On and on they went, neither relenting the Monopoly game bought on a forgotten trip to London forgotten as the eternal war between male and female arose to a cacophony of smashing china and really bad language.
The old dog sniffed the air he had become bored with listening to the stupid pointless creatures, they would be asleep in each others arms soon they did this courting ritual every night. He sighed and decided to take a walk.
Unknown to Ben and the rest of the population of planet earth, strange things were happening in deep space.
In an oddly shaped vessel orbiting the planet Jupiter two celestial beings were discussing a subject of momentous importance.
For the benefit of those of you who don’t speak Alpha Centurion I will offer a brief translation.
“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow, then. Not the destruction of another hostile species I hope that’ll be five this century if it is!”
The other celestial being peered at his partner through his right tentacle the one he always favoured standing on.
“Afraid so, orders are orders. It’s the third planet from the sun, the locals call it Earth. Soppy sods are really knocking it about. Listen to the list, deforestation, that’s chopping down trees. Pollution, ghastly things keep defecating all over the place. Destruction of lower species, bloody things will eat anything, unfortunately not each other though. Finally they’re all mentally unstable, the sound waves of there music are keeping the neighbouring planets up to all hours! All in all indications are that this greedy lot have lost their marbles.”
The first celestial being smiled benignly from just behind his left ear the one he always ate with. “Sounds as though we will be doing them a favour, do we know what they look like.”
“No that was the problem last time we thought they were huge lizard like creatures great lumbering things that was 65,000,000 earth years ago. Great to do that was we wiped out all the lizards leaving this mob no predators so they could run wild, the boss was livid it put him off his dinner for nearly an hour since then we’ve had nothing but complaints from this galaxy now the they’ve started chucking great lumps of metal at the neighbours you can only stand it for so long! So we have to go in and identify them properly this time before we destroy them, no boom and then we find out we’ve wiped out all their pets and left them intact like last time.
“Well I suppose we better get on with it engage hyper drive. Oh we’d better set the Neutron bombarder on maximum they won’t know what hit them.
Meanwhile back on Earth, Ben was busy he was sure he’d buried a bone around here somewhere he sniffed, he pawed at the ground removing some samples of earth for investigation, sniffed again and moved on.
Whilst he was busily engaged in this very important doggy business, the most momentous event ever to happen to the human race happened all of two foot behind him.
The celestial beings ship landed and trundled by use of its own anti gravity device into a safely camouflaged area, beneath the shade of a very large tree.
Yes you’ve guessed it!! Size is not everything, the most powerful beings in the universe are very small by earth standards, but don’t kid yourself the most powerful explosion on Earth is caused by splitting an atom and you can put several of those on the head of a pin.
Inside their vessel the celestial beings stared at there viewers.
“Is that one?”Came the interested enquiry from the first celestial being.
“How the bloody hell should I know.” Came a less interested reply, forty million species in the universe and you expect me to know them all.”
The second celestial being combed a loose hair off his toe with his tongue.
While this interesting swapping of information was going on. Ben’s acute sense of smell completely missed the presence of planet Earths most illustrious visitors, but he did appreciate a good tree. Ben raised his hind leg and with one amazingly good shot urinated straight down the nozzle of the emerging Neutron bombarder. This in turn caused an inverted nuclear reaction of cataclysmic proportions. To the aliens the explosion was equivalent to the destruction of an entire galaxy to Ben it sounded as though a butterfly had just passed wind. The explosion immediately atomised both the ship and its occupants they never even got off a distress call. In fact the disappearance of such a mighty warship caused the Galactic Council to make the Planet Earth off limits as they surmised that the beings that dwelt there had the ability to turn even their own weapons against them.
Ben never did find that bone. Wearily he turned to go home.
“Bloody humans bloody pain in the tail. If they give me any more Doggy Bix I’m leaving.”
The End
Derek K Sherratt
Copywrite 2009-11-01
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Love Makes The World Go Round
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