Pets and Plants

It was decided that next year, the Spinner’s Inlet Owners and Pets Day and the Harvest Festival would revert to being held as separate occasions.

The Reverend Amber Rawlings conceded that her suggestion of holding them in concert had turned out to be much better in theory than in practice. “I really thought that harmony might prevail,” she said.

The Tidal Times had echoed her sentiment, saying that the day would “bring pets and friends together with cooks and gardeners in an amicable atmosphere and spirit of competition.”

“Shouldn’t that be ‘animal’ atmosphere,” young Alun Clements had said. Jillian snorted. Alun was fairly close, as it happened.

Things began going sideways when Danny Sakiyama pointed Finbar O’Toole to the other side of the five-barred gate that led to the events field. “It’s a bloody horse. We do pets,” Danny said.

Danny was marshal and chief judge for all the annual goings-on. His word was law. As the community letter carrier for just about ever, and thus privy to a particular store of private material, he was known and respected—and a little feared—by all.

“It’s a Shetland pony!” Finbar argued. “Look.” He stood astride the somewhat plump Nelly, his feet touching the ground, nothing touching the animal. Or pet. “Watch,” he said. He took a carrot stick from his pocket, held it about a foot below Nelly’s left shoulder. The pony—brushed shiny and beribboned with Irish Republican green, white, and orange ribbons—folded at the knees, snaffled the carrot, and whinnied an apparent thank you.

“She’s named for my granny in Rathdrum, County Wicklow,” Finbar said. “Obviously a pet, ’cause who would name an actual horse after his granny?”

A dispute in the other half of the field grew louder, between the tables reserved separately for fruit and vegetables, next to the ones for baked goods, jams, and sauces.

“It’s a fruit,” stated Dr. Daisy’s nurse, Patsy McFee. She plopped a plump Better Boy tomato on the judging table and pointed to the definition copied from the Oxford English Dictionary that she carried with her everywhere in case of such a dispute. “The glossy fleshy FRUIT . . .” She shouted the last bit, causing heads to lift and people to drift toward what promised to be something of a barney.

“Fruit my foot. When did you last make a fruit soup?” Anwen Brannigan demanded.

They kept at it, while at the gate Finbar was pointing apparently in disbelief and mouthing, “What the f … what the f …?”

“Correct, a female lion,” Eddie Pape explained. “Sit, Fatima.” He tugged on the retractable leash that attached him to the big cat. Fatima growled, stared speculatively at Nelly, but sat.

Finbar, who owned a copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, decided to heed Falstaff’s suggestion that “Caution is preferable to rash bravery.” In other words, he chose discretion over valour, and conceded, “Okay, animal, not pet,” and, “Gee-up” as he pointed Nelly homeward. “And that’s a pet?” as Fatima settled down at Eddie’s feet.

A sudden interjection was offered from the sideline. “Neither of them are pets. There are no such things as pets.” A young woman wearing a large, round badge proclaiming her a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Then Jillian Clements said, “She means neither of them is a pet.” She had become sensitive to subject-verb agreement since her grandma, Sheila Martin, in retired-teacher mode, got onto her about it.

“They are animal companions,” the PETA member said.

Fatima opened wide her large, orangey-brown eyes.

Eddie said, “Easy, Fatima.” The lioness growled.

Danny Sakiyama said, “Er, Eddie …” but nothing else.

Edward “Eddie” Pape had been given some leeway in the matter of keeping wildlife as pets. He was a native of Senegal and a member of that national soccer team, as well as of Tottenham Hotspurs of the English Premier League. His Spurs status had been somewhat compromised the previous season because of a tricky knee, which had seen the team place him on the available-for-loan list, whence the Vancouver Whitecaps, in their usual panic for an effective striker, had taken him for the season.

Eddie had explained in an interview with Cameron Girard that just before leaving Senegal, he had seen Fatima, one of the few remaining lions in his country, lying in a ditch badly injured from an encounter with a Toyota pickup. He had nursed her back to health and finessed her through officialdom on his way to Tottenham, and then to Vancouver. While it was officially illegal to keep such a beast as a “pet,” with intercessions by the premier, who himself had been a fairly decent fullback, and who never missed a Whitecaps game, certain allowances had been made …

Eddie’s wife, Bernadette, had taken a cruise of the islands while the negotiations were concluding, had stopped at Spinner’s Inlet, and decided that a chunk of Eddie’s transfer fee would be well spent on a cabin for rent for the year at the south end of the Inlet. Eddie scored a hat-trick on his first appearance for the ’Caps, against the Seattle Sounders, making him and Bernadette eligible for instant citizenship in the minds of all ’Caps fans.

With French being Senegal’s official language, Bernadette had been grabbed by the Spinner’s Inlet school board, which had been desperate for a teacher for the summer immersion session.

“I thought I might enter her in the exotic pets section,” Eddie said. “If you have one.”

“Of course we do,” Danny said.

“Now, anyway,” Jillian said.

“Still not a pet,” said PETA, who had stepped back a bit.

“I’ll tell her that,” Eddie said, beaming a smile.

From across the field, at the green-plants table. “That’s a bloody pot plant! Mary-Jane!”

“So what? It’s legal.”

And nearby, where competition was becoming dire, a strangled cry of anguish arose at the sight of a collection of crushed chrysanthemums in disarray, while beneath the vegetable table a perfectly proportioned potato, a magnificent Yukon Gold specimen, lay mashed before its time.

Things were getting out of hand.

Annabelle Bell-Atkinson became involved in a row with the Clements youngsters when Alun asked if she and her two corgis were entered in the owner-pet look-alike contest. Another fractious moment came when Jillian asked the geeks the same question about them and their newly acquired chimpanzee friend, Cheetah, whom they had named from watching old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies.

The PETA woman told Danny, “You do realize that not only is a chimpanzee not a pet, it has been judged to be almost a person by a New York court. I demand that those two release it.”

“Here?” Danny asked. He grinned at the passing speculation of the possibility that such an action could result in one or more local families claiming the creature as a missing member.

Over the way, baked goods were under attack. One of two strawberry-and-rhubarb pies was missing a significant slice, giving it the appearance roughly of a gibbous moon. Danny decided, while pointing no particular finger at the other pie’s maker, the often-pugnacious Barbara Baranski, that suspicious circumstances made a prize ruling untenable.

Back with the animals, two lambs brought over by a contestant from Salt Spring panicked when Fatima turned her gaze on them, bounded away at speed, and flattened an iguana belonging to lawyer Ezekial Watson, who howled that he would sue everyone involved in the celebrations, including Harry Dyson for negligence of gate duty.

Silas Cotswold, in The Tidal Times the next day, said, “Several attempts to diffuse the various conflicts did little to help.”

This set Sheila Martin aflame over a word she saw misused everywhere she looked. The mayor and retired English teacher paraded in front of the newspaper office with a sign that said, “DEFUSE, NOT DIFFUSE! LEARN THE LANGUAGE!”

The vote at the events committee by the presidents of the Spinner’s Inlet Owners and Pets Association, the Spinner’s Inlet Gardening Club, and the Cooking and Baking Alliance to go their separate routes in future was unanimous.