"It was what you wanted," Joe said simply. "Later, when we went south, the females saw that only Joe's favorites continued to have babies. So Joe became very—popular."
I said, "You mean they figured it out?"
Joe smiled. "Did you think we do not know about—" he paused to dredge among his amazing store of human idioms, "—the facts of life?"
Bailey shook his head. "What a man! What a race! Think what they would be if they had a human's survival instinct!"
"And thumbs," I added.