Bulka's And Milton's End

: STORIES FOR CHILDREN
: Fables For Children, Stories For Children, Natural Science Stori

Bulka and Milton died at the same time. The old Cossack did not know how

to get along with Milton. Instead of taking him out only for birds, he

went with him to hunt wild boars. And that same fall a tusky boar ripped

him open. Nobody knew how to sew him up, and so he died.



Bulka, too, did not live long after the prisoners had caught him. Soon

after his salvation from the prisoners he began to feel unhappy, and
< r /> started to lick everything that he saw. He licked my hands, but not as

formerly when he fawned. He licked for a long time, and pressed his

tongue against me, and then began to snap. Evidently he felt like biting

my hand, but did not want to do so. I did not give him my hand. Then he

licked my boot and the foot of a table, and then he began to snap at

these things. That lasted about two days, and on the third he

disappeared, and no one saw him or heard of him.



He could not have been stolen or run away from me. This happened six

weeks after the wolf had bitten him. Evidently the wolf had been mad.

Bulka had gone mad, and so went away. He had what hunters call the

rabies. They say that this madness consists in this, that the mad animal

gets cramps in its throat. It wants to drink and cannot, because the

water makes the cramps worse. And so it gets beside itself from pain and

thirst, and begins to bite. Evidently Bulka was beginning to have these

cramps when he started to lick and then to bite my hand and the foot of

the table.



I went everywhere in the neighbourhood and asked about Bulka, but could

not find out what had become of him, or how he had died. If he had been

running about and biting, as mad dogs do, I should have heard of him. No

doubt he ran somewhere into a thicket and there died by himself.



The hunters say that when an intelligent dog gets the rabies, he runs to

the fields and forests, and there tries to find the herb which he needs,

and rolls in the dew, and gets cured. Evidently Bulka never got cured.

He never came back.