One of the defining characteristics of the British people is that we think of ourselves as animal lovers. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we are animal lovers, just that we like to think of ourselves that way. One tale that can hardly fail to raise an ‘ahh’ is that of Devon resident Mr. Michael Olcot who decided to take his pet Jack Russell out for a drag. Actually, he intended to take it out for a drive but that’s not quite how it worked out. On departing from their home in Westward Ho, which is just down the road from the tiny hamlets of Hi Ho Silver and Away, Mr. Olcot tied his dog’s lead to the front seat and carefully shut the door, without noticing the important detail that his dog was shut outside the car, attached to his lead which was attached inside. A mile down the road, his pet, which had been bouncing unhappily behind the car, was saved by some people at a bus stop, who coughed up their chips and alerted the man to his error which was that, under government regulations, if you are going to tow a small dog behind you should first fit it with number plates and a hazard light.
An even more unsavoury incident occurred recently when a former East End steel worker broke a world record in transporting baby animals from one container to another. Nothing wrong with that, except that they were maggots and he was using his mouth to move them. Specifically, he crammed his mouth with the writhing larvae and deposited 17kg or about 35 pounds of live fly babies to break the record.
He said later that it was disgusting and that he had no idea it would smell so bad. He was heaving violently and said it was like putting his head down a public toilet but that he was determined to do it. And that is another defining characteristic of the British, never willing to give up, when the citizens of other countries wouldn’t even have tried. The Jack Russell is on the mend and doing fine. The record breaking maggot man is searching for a mouth wash strong enough to peel the paint off a car roof.