Read Online Snowball's Chance by John Reed - Free Book Online

lain in the grass on a May afternoon, just to watch a beetle push a dung ball. So, simply stated, there was no farming, because there was no planting. Nobody seemed to want to plant, anymore.
    Fortunately, Snowball and Thomas had introduced the pigs to the “sniff-test” for real money. And now confident in transactions of paper denominations, the pigs were enabled to hire out the Dreamer’s Mill. In this, the animals managed to do their part, as limited as it was. Grind some grain. Cut some logs. Much better than pulling ploughs, all granted. Besides, there were far too many animals to work the mill everyday—so the activities were more distracting than obligatory.
    Work when you want to.…
    Filmont the Labrador loved these slow, warm days. Having long since recovered from his injuries, Filmont had established himself as not only an adept student of the humanization classes (he walked and wore clothing quite smartly) but as an able worker, when there was work to be done. With his ever-willingness to lend a paw, and his boundless generosity, he had become, perhaps, the most popular animal on the farm. (Except for Snowball—oh, and Minimus, by all means, not to forget Minimus.) And in those languorous days of spring and summer, Filmont wandered from stall to stall—andshared, with one animal and the next, long draughts from buckets of water, which he frequently flavored with a few drops of whiskey. And he and his hosts would talk of their loves and pains—and then, in graceful transition, the animals would sit back, and listen to Filmont as he dreamily reminisced of the places he had been when he was a pup.
    Filmont had once been loved by a girl named Madeline Frederick (whom he had not seen in so long that he assumed she was dead) and she had brought him absolutely everywhere. He spoke of carnivals and fairgrounds. And even a circus that he had watched while sitting on the young lady’s lap—he’d been rolled up in her sweater. Bless her soul, he would sigh, those were the days—cotton candy and smoked sausage and turkeys roasted on skewers. “Oh, excuse me,” he’d apologize to any pig that might be in hearing distance, or bird who might take offense. But even so—entirely disregarding the meat—he described a place of leisurely distraction that eclipsed all of life’s miseries. And the animals, without so much as setting a hoof in such a paradise, did indeed experience a forgetting—a blissful release from their every woe.
    Yes, there could be a light-hearted laugh! Yes, there could be a light-hearted land!
    And when Filmont remembered the song that his Madeline had sung to him as she cradled him in her arms, well, it didn’t take long before he had howled himself hoarse and, in his stead, the other animals were taking up the old folk melody—some called it a spiritual—to harmonize as they sat around the campfire, roasting earthworms.
    I went to the Animal Fair. The birds and the beasts were there
,
    The big raccoon, by the light of the moon, was combing his auburn hair
.
    The monkey he got drunk, and fell on the elephant’s trunk
,
    The elephant sneezed, and fell on his knees, And that was the end of the monk! The monk! The monk! The monk!
    And as it turned out, Snowball too was listening—to Filmont and the animals. And Snowball too was learning—from Filmont and the animals. And it was in mid-June, the first item on the agenda of a Sunday Meeting, that Snowball proposed his own carnival, which, to the oohs and ahhs of half a dozen campfire regulars, he called, “Animal Fair.” (Several of the sheep, who immediately started out, “We went to the Animal Fair …” were quieted with a few sharp nips by a pair of shepherds who, perhaps, had been appointed to this very contingency.)
    Snowball’s proposition was to open the farm—
    “Open the farm to the village, as, when we erected our windmills, we opened the farm to the wind.”
    “Our lives,” said Snowball, “will be easy. Our profits