Alternate Reading of Call of the Wild

I had been planning to write about my next vacation (NYC probably, then The Game in the Have, then Lanc Lanc), but instead I decided at the last minute to write about something that made me happy.
It happened yesterday during my 6th period class, which is normally my best class of the day. Every student is polite and actually pretends to be interested in "Call of the Wild." Yesterday however, they really engaged with the text on a more nuanced level. We'd reached the chapter where Buck lives with John Thornton and falls madly in love with him. No students so far had questioned this turn of events, but one student in 6th period, after reading the one of the many passages that described Buck's "passion", and "adoration" stopped and said "How did this go from being the toughest book ever to a book about some fruity Dog?"
I paused for a moment and answered "Well, [Alan] you're right that the tone of the novel shifts a lot in this passage. It went from being a story about how hard life was and how mean Buck was becoming to one about how much he loves John Thornton. However, Buck is not homosexual. Besides, he's not even a human."
"But he loves John Thornton?"
"People can love people of the same gender and not be homosexual - don't you love your male relatives?"
"But I don't go around saying 'I Love [name of big football-playing friend who's also in the period].'"
Awkward pause. "Anyways, let's keep reading."
They did get back on task, but made sure to emphasize with inflection passages mentioning how they "grappled" with each other, how John Thornton was the "the only one who could hold Buck" or put a pack on his back, and the "naked bedrock."
Now, a perfect teacher would have not found this funny, but if you're me, and you've been teaching all day, anything is funny, and I lost it, hiding my face behind the Everbind edition of Jack London's classic.
On a related note, another period spontaneously decided they would read it like scripture at Church, complete with preacher-like inflections and shouts and exclamations from the class/congregation. Once again, a better teacher would have shut this down with a look, but all of a sudden everyone wanted a turn to read aloud, even the ones who had never read aloud in class before.
I write this all to say that anyone who says are kids are "dumb" is missing the point. They are incredibly clever. The biggest mistake you can make is underestimating their intelligence with regards to classroom management/cheating prevention etc. They can also be very funny when they want to be, and just not with fake farts.