Summary
Queenie, a quadruped Florence Nightingale in white cross-belt, presides over a ramshackle veterinary Valhalla where Rosie—simian secretary, sous-chef, and ledger-librarian—juggles receipts and bananas with equal finesse. A distress neigh from a wheezing pony yanks the equine physician into the countryside, where she stumbles upon Billiken, a mule whose ribs read like a xylophone of exploitation; she unhooks the traces, absconding with the beast and a moral debt. Back at the menagerie-cum-clinic, a huckster in spats demands a zebra for reasons never interrogated—status, spectacle, perhaps sheer colonial appetite. Lacking the genuine article, the staff dip a docile pony in monochrome trompe-l’oeil, sell the counterfeit at a premium, and watch the customer parade his prize until a civic fountain rinses the illusion down to shabby equine nudity. Humiliated, the mark returns, fury in his gait, only to be routed by Billiken’s newly empowered hooves. Still smarting, the man returns with dynamite, a cartoonish avatar of vengeance, planting a kerosene can of powder beneath the hospital floorboards; Queenie, ever perceptive, moves the explosive so that the saboteur becomes the architect of his own spectacular exit. In the smoke-cleared aftermath, the animals coronate Queenie not merely healer but sovereign—conqueror of cruelty, usurper of human dominion.
Synopsis
Queenie is the doctor in an animal hospital. Rosie, the monkey, is nurse, cook, bookkeeper and cashier. Queenie is called to attend to a sick pony, and on her way there sees Billiken, an over-worked mule. Queenie unharnesses him and takes him home. She sees in Billiken a possible assistant. A man comes in and wants to buy a zebra. As there is no zebra in the hospital, a pony is painted with stripes. The man takes him home, and while telling his wife about him, the "zebra" gets a bath from a fountain. When the man finds he has been cheated he goes back, and demands his money. Billiken shows her appreciation for what Queenie did for her by chasing the man out. He (the man) plans to blow up the hospital with dynamite, but Queenie sees him put the can there, and stands it behind him. Queenie is crowned conqueror.
