Kickass oak wilt dilemma

Kickass, the doorstop dog, sympathizes with the keeper in his suspicion that on top of all kinds of trouble, like his village flooding out and his freezer accidentally getting unplugged, he may now be suffering from oak wilt.  Like several of the great oak that embrace the north side of his house, he has developed a few brown spots and he has the feeling that a root fungus may be responsible for his increasing inclination to rest his limbs.

The half dozen huge oak that define the oak savannah around his house have always been revered—almost worshipped, by the keeper, and considered the highest quality partners in the great dance of life.  The thinking was that they, and therefore he, would go on forever, through blizzards and droughts and floods, and they would keep on dancing.

Oak wilt is spread in part by the “sap-feeding nitidulid beetle,” and some “refoliating” may occur with shots of “propizal propiconazole.”  The keeper is not cheered by any of this information, and is searching the literature to see if brandy has any treatment role, or might at least encourage “refoliating.”