Part II Chapter 9 Doctor Dolittle's Garden by Hugh Lofting
DAB-DAB'S VIEWS ON INSECT LIFE
A fortnight later we were all gathered round the kitchen fire after supper. I had been working pretty hard at my secretarial duties and the Doctor had insisted that I take an evening off. But he of course, who never seemed to take, or need, a rest, was busy outside in his sheds, on some new phase of his studies in insect language.
"I wonder," said Chee-Chee looking dreamily into the fire, "how much longer he is going to occupy himself with these miserable bugs. Seems to me a sort of a dull study. It should be getting near the time for him to take a voyage, don't you think so, Tommy?"
"Well," I said, "let us see: How long is it since he went on one?"
"Five months, one week and three days," said Chee-Chee.
"We got back on the twenty-third of October—in the afternoon," Polynesia put in.
"Dear me! How precise you are!" said I. "I suppose you two old globe-trotters are hankering to be off again. Homesick for Africa?"
"Well, not necessarily Africa," said Chee-Chee. "But I admit I would like to see him get started on something more exciting than listening to cockroaches."
"The next voyage he goes on," said Gub-Gub, "he must take me with him. I haven't been abroad since he visited the Land of the Monkeys, and the Kingdom of the Jolliginki. It's my turn to go. Besides I need it in my education. There must be a chapter in my Encyclopedia of Food, on African and Pagan Cooking."
"Humph!" grunted Dab-Dab, who was clearing away the dishes from the table behind us. "I don't know where the funds are coming from if he does go on another voyage. There is precious little left in the money box."
"Thirteen pounds, nine shillings and twopence-halfpenny," put in Too-Too the accountant—"and the baker's bill for last month not paid yet."
"If you think you are going to get the Doctor to drop bug language for a long while yet, you are sadly mistaken," said Dab-Dab. "What do you think he was talking of last night?"
"I've no idea, Dab-Dab," said I.
"Well," continued the housekeeper in a weary voice, "he mentioned—just mentioned in passing, you know—that he thought it would be a good thing if he did something for—for" (she seemed to have great difficulty in bringing herself to pronounce the fatal word)—"for house-flies!"
"For house-flies!" I cried. "What on earth was he going to do for them?"
"The Lord only knows," groaned Dab-Dab, her voice full of patient weariness. "That's what I said to him: 'Doctor,' I said, 'what in the name of goodness can you do for house-flies, the greatest pest on earth—creatures which do nothing but carry disease and ruin good food?'
"'Well,' says he, 'that's just the point, Dab-Dab. The house-flies have no friends. Perhaps if some naturalist, and a really great naturalist, Dab-Dab—one who could look far, far ahead—were to take up their cause and see what could be done for them, they could be made into friends for the rest of creation instead of enemies. I would like, as an experiment, to start a Country House for House-Flies. I think it might lead to some very interesting results.'
"There," Dab-Dab continued, "I flew right off the handle. I admit I don't often lose my temper."—She swept some cheese-crumbs savagely off a chair-seat with her right wing—"'Doctor,' I said, 'that is the last straw. You've had a home for lost dogs; a rat and mouse club; a squirrels' hotel; a rabbits' apartment house and heaven only knows how many more crazy notions. But the idea, the very idea, of a Country House for House-Flies!—well, that to my way of thinking is about the end. Can't you see,' I said, 'that this encouragement of other animal species—without more er—er—discrimination, I think you call it—will lead to the ruin and destruction of your own kind and mine? Some creatures just can't be made friends of. Encourage the house-flies and Man disappears.'
"'Well,' he said, 'I've been talking to them. And I must confess there is a good deal to be said on their side. After all, they have their rights.'
"'Not with me, they haven't,' said I. 'They are a nuisance and a pest and cannot be treated as anything else.'—Such a man! What can one do with him?"
"Still," put in Gub-Gub, "it is a wonderful idea—a Country House for House-Flies! I suppose they would have a boy-swat for swatting boys who came in and disturbed them—the same as people have a fly-swat to kill flies.... And maybe have papers full of sticky goo near the door, in which people would get tangled up and stuck if they invaded the premises. It's quite an idea. I'd like to see it started."
"You'd like to see it started would you?" screamed Dab-Dab rushing at poor Gub-Gub with outstretched neck as though she meant to skewer him against the wainscot. "You haven't the wits of a cockroach yourself. You get started on your way to bed at once—or I'll get out the frying-pan as a pig-swat."
Gub-Gub retired into a corner.
"Just the same, it's a good idea," he muttered to Too-Too as he settled down where the irate housekeeper couldn't see him.
I am glad to say that the Doctor did not, as a matter of fact, attempt this wild plan for the encouragement of house-flies. Heaven only knows what would have happened if he had. He mentioned it to me once or twice however.
"My idea was, Stubbins," he said, "that flies with a house of their own to go to—or several—would not bother to enter people's houses. This eternal war between the species—man against rats, rats against cats; cats against dogs, etc, etc.—there is no end to it—must lead finally to some sort of tyranny. Just now Man is on top as the tyrant. He dictates to the animal kingdom. But many of his lesser brothers suffer in that dictation. What I would like to see—and indeed it is my one ambition as a constructive naturalist—would be happy balance. I've never met any species, Stubbins, that did not do some good—general good—along with the harm. House-flies for example: I've no idea what good they do, but I'm sure it exists. By making them our friends we ought to be able to get together and improve conditions all round, instead of making war on one another. War gets us nowhere."
"But there were other insect species which you thought of investigating, were there not?" I asked, hoping to side-track him away from the house-flies, which to me sounded like a rather hopeless direction.
"Oh, yes, yes—to be sure, to be sure," said he hurriedly. "I've only just started. There are the moths and butterflies. From them I hope to learn a great deal. It is hardly the right season yet for the natural hatching out of butterflies and moths. But I have been working on my artificial incubators. We have a splendid supply of chrysales. I think I can turn out in the next few weeks about any kind of moth and butterfly I want—that is, of those varieties that are naturally found in these parts."