The Crocodile- Part 4 Copyright Robert Fullarton 2017

The Crocodile- Part 4

Blomquist's Dream

-Copyright Robert Fullarton 2017

In the dead of night certain noises could be heard, but this time they were not coming from the wooden outhouse, but one of Blomquists’ chicken coups. A multitude of amber brown and white feathers were scattered into clouds as the creature carried out the great massacre of the chickens- a long foreseen event to the reader- with the front door shattered by a mere movement of the crocodiles tail. In the middle of the “massacre”, a cautious and cunning fox, merely watched the event from the outside while the chickens moaned and shrieked in the dark.

Blomquist was having the “greatest dream of his life” where all the towns people gave up walking their Italian Greyhounds and instead walked their “prized” Nubian crocodiles down the Hermanstrasse, where civil servant Klaus Von Karbunkle, sworn enemy of Blomquist, upon his “beloved” bicycle had to bow and scrape and honour the eccentric chicken farmer for his scientific breakthrough, as the greatest discovery of the century, the taming of the crocodile. How it became human over time, through the rigours of being made very polite, passive, docile and attractive to the common man on the street!

However with the Italian Greyhounds now manning the coaches for the tourist trade, the new population of crocodiles were in every lawn, wandering the streets, with postmen complaining of the “impossibility of being able to deliver the mail”, with hands mauled and how the “occasional postman had been eaten in the line of duty!” It was not just the postmen who moaned at the gates of the Rathaus, but also the concerned members of the knitting circle, who had no cats to feed, because of the hungry and loutish behaviour of juvenile “delinquent crocodiles” that roamed the streets at night, giving a menacing look and threatening the public safety of every citizen, dog, cat, postman and civil servant in sheer chaotic madness!

The Crocodiles were not behaving themselves they were acting like young teenage boys on a crime spree, raiding every chicken coup upon their path of destruction! Blomquist’s very own “pet” seemed to be the ringleader in the entire kerfuffle! As the crocodiles had escaped and sauntered rather casually through the streets, the local cooper’s cider cellar had leaked, with a colossal spillage of fermented cider flowing through the cellars to the brim and into the gaping mouths of the wandering reptiles. Now in consequence there were 25 crocodiles drunk on cider, “out of mind”, having “lost the run of themselves”, they struggled down the road, until the police arrived and had to reprimand them, to lock them in the town jail for the night.

The crocodiles seemed not to care much, as they drifted off into an intoxicated coma, as the district nurses and doctors worked for a solid hour trying to carry the cumbersome, unconscious beasts away on the hospital stretchers. Blomquist stood out on the edge of his front lawn, listening to the fading commotion that dispersed in the growing darkness of the midsummer night. Why had the authorities not put a speedy end to the event?

Why had the people even listened to Blomquist’s persistence that Crocodile’s were a very “misunderstood animal” comparable with being the “Flemish rabbit” of the reptile world. The dream had transformed into a nightmare, it was the cost of ignoring the honest warnings and obvious signs for which the social experiment spelled disaster!

Blomquist awoke, from his nightmare in a cold sweat, tugged loose from the web like layers of his bed sheets and ran down the stairs in haste, to see several chicken coops completely ransacked, with the shattered wood strewn everywhere and with a trail of chicken feathers leading into the dense bushes of the neighbours lawn.

“Oh that wicked fox must have been at it again, only this time its worse than ever!”

He said aloud half-heartedly, seeking an excuse, so to hold firmly to his naive fantasy.

However the Crocodile had not touched his bowl of water, the door of the outhouse had been smashed through as well, the bolt had been torn asunder and once more the nauseous feelings of failure and regret began to surface in Blomquist's troubled heart.