Doctor Dolittle’s Zoo. Hugh Lofting

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СКАЧАТЬ said, “that's a good idea, because once we get the zoo running it will be very hard to dig things out and change them around afterwards. The animals would very naturally object to that.”

      “And then I think we ought to have some shops,” said the white mouse. “Don't you?”

      “Shops!” I cried. “What on earth for?”

      “Well, you see,” said he, “by the time we're finished it will be like a town anyhow—an animal town—with a main street, I suppose, and the houses and clubs either side. A few shops where the squirrels could buy nuts and the mice could get acorns and grains of wheat—don't you see?—it would liven things up a bit. Nothing cheers a town up so much as good shops. And I think a restaurant or two where we could go and get our meals if we came home late and hadn't time to raise our own supper—yes, that's a good notion—we should surely have a restaurant or two.”

      “But who are you going to get to run these shops?” asked Polynesia. “Stores and cafés don't run themselves, you know.”

       “Putting their heads together over the Doctor's money affairs”

      “Oh, that's easy,” laughed the white mouse. “I know lots of mice—and rats, too—who would jump at the chance to run a nut store or a restaurant—just have a natural gift for business, especially catering.”

      “Maybe, for the rats and mice,” said Polynesia. “But they're not the only ones in the zoo, remember. This isn't just a rat and mouse town.”

      “Well, I imagine it will probably separate itself into districts anyway,” said the white mouse. “You won't forget, Tommy, that you've promised us the top end, near the gate, for our club? I have that whole section laid out in my mind's eye complete. And it is going to be just the niftiest little neighborhood you ever saw.”

      Well, after a tremendous amount of planning and working out we finally got the new zoo going. The list of public institutions with which it began was as follows: The Rabbits' Apartment House (this consisted of an enormous mound full of rabbit holes with a community lettuce garden attached), the Home for Cross-Bred Dogs, the Rat and Mouse Club, the Badgers' Tavern, the Foxes' Meeting House and the Squirrels' Hotel.

      Each of these was a sort of club in its way. And we had to be most particular about limiting the membership, because from the outset thousands of creatures of each kind wanted to join. The best we could do for those who were not taken in was to keep their names on a waiting list, and as members left (which was very seldom) admit them one by one. Each club had its president and committee who were responsible for the proper organization and orderly carrying on of the establishment.

      As the white mouse had prophesied, our new animal town within the high walls of the old bowling green did naturally divide itself up into districts. And the animals from each, while they often mingled in the main street with those from other quarters of the town, minded their own business, and no one interfered with anybody else.

      This we had to make the first and most important rule of the Dolittle Zoo: within the walls of the town all hunting was forbidden. No member of the Home for Cross-Bred Dogs was allowed to go ratting—in the zoo. No fox was permitted to chase birds or squirrels.

      And it was surprising how, when the danger of pursuit by their natural enemies was removed, all the different sorts of animals took up a new, freer and more open kind of life. For instance, it was no unusual thing in Animal Town to see a mother squirrel lolling on her veranda, surrounded by her children, while a couple of terriers walked down the street within a yard of them.

      The shops and restaurants, of course, were mostly patronized by the rats and mice, who had a natural love for city life, and the majority of them were situated in the section at the north end of the inclosure which came to be known as Mouse Town. Nevertheless at the main grocery on a Saturday night we often saw foxes and dogs and crows all mixed up, buying their Sunday dinner from a large rat. And the mouse errand boys who delivered goods at the customers' houses were not afraid to walk right into a bulldog's kennel or a fox's den.

       “I think it's just a marvelous idea!”

THE SIXTH CHAPTER POVERTY AGAIN

      OF course it would be quite too much to expect that with lots of different kinds of animals housed in the same enclosure there would be no quarrels or disputes. It was in fact part of the Doctor's plan to see what could be done in getting different creatures who were born natural enemies to live together in harmony.

      “Obviously, Stubbins,” said he, “we can't expect foxes to give up their taste for spring chickens, or dogs their love of ratting, all in a moment. My hope is that by getting them to agree to live peaceably together while within my zoo, we will tend toward a better understanding among them permanently.”

      Yes, there were fights, especially in the first few months before the different communities got settled down. But, curiously enough, many of the quarrels were among animals of the same kind. I think the badgers were the worst. In the evenings at their tavern they used to play games. Neither the Doctor nor I could ever make out what these games were about. One was played with stones on a piece of ground marked out with scratches. It was almost like drafts or checkers. The badgers used to take this game quite seriously—the badger is rather a heavy type of personality anyway. And there seemed to be championships played and great public interest taken in the outcome of matches. Frequently these ended in a quarrel. And in the middle of the night a frightened squirrel would come and wake me or the Doctor and tell us there was a fight going on in the Badgers' Tavern and the whole town was being disturbed.

      In the end, at the white mouse's suggestion (he was more proud and important than ever, now that he had been elected first Mayor of Animal Town), this led to the Doctor instituting the Zoo Police Force. Two dogs, two foxes, two squirrels, two rabbits and two rats were elected as constables, with a bulldog for captain and a fox as head of the Secret Service. After that woe betide any quarrelsome member who tried to start a brawl in the Badgers' Tavern! He promptly found himself being trotted down the street under arrest to spend the night in the town jail.

      One of the first arrests to be made by the zoo police was that of poor Gub-Gub. Having noticed that the vegetable garden attached to the Rabbits' Apartment House was promising a nice harvest of early lettuce, he made a descent on it one night secretly. But the chief of the fox detectives spotted him and he was handcuffed (or trotter-cuffed) before he could say Jack Robinson. It was only on the Doctor's forbidding him entrance to the zoo compound for the future and going security for his good behavior that he was dismissed the following morning with a caution.

      “Next time,” said his honor the Mayor (the white mouse who was acting as magistrate), “we will give you six days' hard labor in the rabbits' garden—with a muzzle on.”

      Besides the Rat and Mouse Club, of which I shall speak further later on, the other more important department in the new zoo was the Home for Cross-Bred Dogs. This was an institution which Jip had long pestered John Dolittle to establish. Ever since the days of the Canary Opera, when Jip had tried to run a Dogs' Free Bone Kitchen in the East End of London, he had been hoping that the Doctor would discover a way to give all the strays and outcasts of dogdom a decent home. Now, in the seventh heaven of contentment, he, with Toby and Swizzle, was very busy working out the details of the new club.

      “Now some dogs,” said Jip to me, “like to live in kennels—prefer СКАЧАТЬ