John Stocks writes about...

“Dog Days”

John replies to the preview notice with a welcome explanation of his poem “Dog Days,” in issue 282. The revelation confirms one of Bewildering Stories’ favourite mottoes: “There is no story so truly Bewildering as reality.”

It looks fine to me. Love the Challenge too. The poem is a true story in all respects. We live in a three-brick thick Edwardian house, and it becomes appallingly hot during a heat wave; so in the past we cooled it by hosing it down with water.

We have a feral family of urban foxes close by and the death of one — the corpse well hidden in an herbaceous border — resulted in neighbours and the council literally pulling up drains to try and ascertain the source of the ‘pong’. The smell of decomposing fox in a heat wave is truly horrendous. I think we were in Norway at the time.

In the end, men in white suits with face masks came and took the corpse away.

Copyright © 2008 by John Stocks

As Dr. Freud might have said, “Sometimes a fox is just a fox.” No need to research fox symbolism or the role of foxes in mythology when you have a real one practically on your doorstep. A fascinating study in the transformation of reality into symbol.

Your approach to air conditioning is also quite practical. We must make a note of it... However, you are not going to believe this, but one reader took the title literally and saw the line “We dampened the walls for hours” as an image of dogs... um... marking their territory, shall we say.

I thought the interpretation was hysterically funny but had to admit that it was logical and creative. If you’ve ever wondered why we’re called “Bewildering Stories,” now you know.

Don