The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Canines xcvii-cxxiii

In a completely different context, therefore, the Father of Teeth came upon a region which overflowed so maniacally with life that he quickly wore down even his most powerful gnashers. The trees were bowed with the weight of their fruit; the squirrels were horribly obese; and such was the bounty of the soil that the very stones were said to be fertile.

Being quite unable to chew it all up himself, the Father of Teeth spun a parable to send out among the region's thousands of well-fed inhabitants. According to this parable, the Creator of the universe had made everything just for them, and would guard their welfare provided they continually reproduced themselves and obeyed some peculiar commandments about their sex lives which the Father of Teeth sniggeringly inserted as a last-minute joke. The parable went in through the inhabitants' ears and settled among their cerebral synapses, urging them to breed and consume and breed again.

On returning some centuries later, the Father of Teeth found the last few dozen scraping the bare rocks for something slightly less than a living. They were thin and sour, and were singing dour hymns about their vitamin deficiencies. The parable, by contrast, had changed hardly at all, and burbled cheerily at the Father of Teeth as he hurried on his way.