He took a bull and he took a cow.
He took a boar and of course a sow.
He took two dogs and a couple of cats;
He even took mice and a pair of rats.
He took grasshoppers and honey bees;
But why in the world did Noah take fleas?

Wouldn’t it have been nice if we could have personally picked out which animals Noah was to have carried on the Ark? In my case, fireants would never have made the cut.

Scientists are discovering more and more that every living creature has a place in the ecology. Even some mosquitoes are pollinators. I think that it would be difficult, however, to sell a dog on the importance of fleas and when I’m working in the garden, there are several other different types of bugs that I think we could get along without.

In drawing the illustration for A Dog’s Lament, I indicated who the guilty one might have been who smuggled the fleas aboard.