Caninus Hobus

“Ever been to a pig smash before?” the hobo said. “Like cockfighting but with swine.” Mabel nodded while looking down at her yellow shoes. She had learned so many things since leaving home but that didn’t prevent her from occasionally feeling fearful.

As they lumbered into the stalled train car, amid the hay bales and rusted tractor parts, Mabel’s thoughts drifted, not for the first time that afternoon, back to the home she left behind. She turned to the hobo, and asked what she’d wondered since they first met that morning.

“Whats an emotionally unavailable yet attractive hobo like you doing in a place like this?”...Oh wait, Mabel internally conjectured — hobos are known for frequenting hay-strewn abandoned rail cars. But then she was startled by a hideous animal sound coming from the next car.

Turns out the hobo brought his mother, who clearly thought she was an animal of some sort. Mental issues are prevalent in homeless encampments, she remembered. “Gggrrrgghhh woof woof” the mother screamed!

The hobo's mother crawled toward the center of the encampment on all fours, pausing occasionally to itch fleas from her collar. The hobo, not far behind, held a homemade leash with both hands. Just before they reached the middle the hobo gave a soft tug and said, "please rise."

The dog woman slowly ascended to her feet, and the camp was silent. Everyone gawked in astonishment as she began her sermon with a perfectly eloquent “Bark-bark barking bark.”

Which immediately caused every cat in the camp to perk up and pay attention. They began “mew-mewing” one to the other, scandalized and agitated by this rude she-canine’s outrageous feline-mongering. Eventually they could stand it no more and rushed forward en masse.

Claws flew everywhere. After what seemed like forever, the cats settled down and left a bloody heap in the middle. Luckily there was good medical support at the encampment. Freddy “doc” Murphy was a retired, or perhaps disgruntled, former vet who tended to the wounds.

Murphy had his work cut out for him. What possessed these otherwise normal humans to battle each other as canines he would never know—he was a vet after all, not a psychologist. When he got to the hobo’s mother he gasped. Under her left paw was a mark, mysterious yet familiar.

“The glorious tribe of caninus hobus...” Murphy whispered, more to himself than to the dog woman. The mark was undeniable, and it was undeniably on her paw. “Could it be? But they’re extinct.”

"Yes, but if they're extinct, what could possibly explain this heinous twelve-inch gash. If I were a betting man, I'd say this is a DNA-rearrangement operation that went off the tracks. If we're not careful, we'll all soon be looking down the maw of this voracious meat-eater"

He paused dramatically, looked at the crowd that had since gathered and walked away. This would have been an impressive observation had he not stumbled over an old campfire and fallen face-first into an old pile of garbage. The crowd dispersed and mystery was never fully solved.