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The Fleas of Sir Lancelot
A very bad pun
In olden times, a small cohort of fleas supported themselves and their families upon the body and blood of the great Sir Lancelot, a knight of King Arthur’s court.
Flea populations, unencumbered by any knowledge of Malthusian theory and certainly living upon what must have seemed like an inexhaustible food supply, do tend to grow rapidly, but many were tossed out regularly with the weary knights clothing when he decided they were too dirty to wear another day. Admittedly that action was not contemplated often, as the hygiene of Sir Lancelot was far from pristine, so it did get crowded now and then, but eventually the great Knight would get weary of the stench and the itching and would toss his clothes to be washed by admiring maidens, taking many a sleeping or careless flea with them.
The surviving fleas, lucky or perhaps more cautious, would console themselves by saying that their children and relatives had gone to a better place. Sometimes that was true, as a few might jump to the fair skin of the wash maiden before the clothes went into the stream. Some may also have jumped to her when Sir Lancelot was enjoying some improper dalliance on a summer day, but fleas do not care by what provenance you arrived at the Promised Land.
