To not be a six-foot-tall man–squirrel
Squeeorled on August 15, 2021.
Monday–Saturday. I failed in my task of not being a six-foot-tall man–squirrel once again.
Feeling rather macrurous this week, even after my failed attempts to cavort with Bouba and Kiki a week prior, I realized once again I was, alas, a six-foot-tall man–squirrel. And this time ’round, I didn’t even need to don my ridiculous and rather unconvincing man–squirrel costume. I simply was a man–squirrel. So, my fate sealed—by Fate, naturally, heartless bitch that she was—I dropped to all fours, made muldersomely loud chittering noises, and scurried outdoors, into my back yard, where I intended to join my squirrelly pals until they either rejected me (once again) or I got hit by a car.
Kiki was always the sharper one. Bouba was just dull and round. And today proved no different. Bouba, momentarily, actually thought I was a fellow squirrel, but Kiki, incredulous as ever, quickly disabused Bouba of that notion. I chittered, but Kiki remained unconvinced. I twitched and I twerked my tail around, to no avail. Kiki quirked a dubious eyebrow as if to tell me how truly silly I looked, turned her nose up at me, and scurried back up a tree with Bouba in tow. Crestfallen, I skulked off into the forest behind Bouillabaisse Boulevard where I could be a squirrel, albeit a lonely one, in peace.
Hours passed and minutes scurried by, with seconds in tow. I plunged deeper and deeper into the woods. Darkness fell all around me, and I realized I was lost: And if my man–squirrelness didn’t segue into the usual cynocephaly that came upon me at this hour, and ultimately lycanthropy, the orcs and wargs and grues and ewes would come out and surely eat me.
The spiders came out, and the bats, and the mosquitoes. Things moved about in the darkness, thumping, slithering, bumping, and gurgling. My ears pricked up and spun in all directions at the slightest sound: My spidey-sense was tingling, atavistic hunter-gatherer instincts took over my pea-sized brain: I could hear everything—even a pin fart (if a pin dared to fart this deep in the woods). The bats flew about me, eating all the mosquitoes, and then the spiders leapt into action and ate all the bats.
I thought about climbing a tree, but there were so many to choose from: I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and having so many options in front of me caused my brain to lock up and sink into my shoes. It was then I heard the first heart-stopping cry from the direction of the swamp: The orcs and wargs and grues and ewes were coming out to surely eat me. I squeeorled and sank into my shoes myself.
“Hork hork hork!” I hooted in a desperate attempt to ward them off. I was still a man–squirrel, and my squirrel–manliness would not help me defend myself from the feared onslaught. Whereas it served me well in discouraging many a human from coming within 50′ of me, it would serve me not a whit here in the Thattagawatchee Forest. The law of the jungle ruled, and a doofus-shaped anthropoid was a tasty treat for the orcs and wargs and grues and ewes, his aspirations to squirrelhood notwithstanding. The slowest gazelle was always the one to get chomped by the charging lion, and I am sure the craziest one fared no better. Lacking any knives, bows, arrows, spears, clubs, pistols, or revolvers, or anything else with which to defend myself—not even a piece of tactical dryer lint in my pocket—I fell upon my only option: Hooting as frenetically as I could in a desperate, doofussy attempt to appear even the slightest bit threatening.
And so: “Hork hork hork!”
“Wherg wherg wherg!” came the blood-curdling reply. It was then I realized the orcs and wargs and grues and ewes did not want to eat me…
Sunday. I succeeded in my task of not being a six-foot-tall man–squirrel. However, I was only able to do this by instead becoming a detritivore parasite for a day: A featureless white worm. I wormed my way through my house, discovering that things like stairs and doorknobs posed quite the challenge to my lumbricoid form. So I stopped being a featureless white worm and grew some useful features back: Arms and legs.
“Briefcase! Gatorade!!” I shouted as I wormed open the door to my expansive pantry—the revolutionary slogan of Dingleberry–Hampsterism.
Someone—or perhaps another human-shaped person–thing similar to the one I ran into last week—shouted back from within the pantry: “Gatorade! Briefcase!!”
I frowned. There should not be any human-shaped people–things in there—just food. And even featurelessful white worms do not eat people or people–things. “Briefcase! Gatorade!!” I chanted again, emphasizing each word with a firm twerk.
No answer. I was sad and frowned again, then closed the door. I wanted some cheese, in either wheel or log form. It didn’t matter. But it had to be real cheese, from a real cow (or bull), and, much like a petulant child, I wanted it now. There was only one option (after all the whinging and foot-stamping had subsided): Don my asshats, leisure suit, and bolo tie, and go out again.
I went on foot. My Trabi was in the shop, my shoes weren’t, and today was a fine day for a walk. The crushing heat wave that global smarming had wrought upon us this past week was over; the weather had returned to a balmy 108 °F, and the flaming birds had stopped falling. That my shoes were still full of brain matter presented a minor obstacle, but I dealt with it in my trademark style: I flushed them down the toilet and went out barefoot.
I first made a quick stop at the Circle K (where I swear I saw Elvis chatting with Abe Vigoda and Kevin Federline while eating a Twinkie in the back of the store), to see if they had any cheese—in either wheel or log form. But they wouldn’t let me in barefoot. So next I moobled down to the Spend-O-Mart. I considered bumbling down to the Spend-O-Mart, but no one else was around to watch my escapades, so a-moobling it was.
The “Do not enter” sign at one end of the parking lot was replaced with a sign stating “Donut enter”—a remnant of the calamitous farmer’s market in which I had recently participated. The sign hung at a drunken angle, three screws missing and its post bent, and despite all the torrential black rain that followed the heat wave, was still spattered with dried donut filling. I shuddered at the memory and continued on my scullious sojourn across the two-mile-wide parking lot, now using two of my three asshats as makeshift shoes in order to wend my way past the “No shirt, no shoes, no cheese!” sign without incident.
A-wend my way I did, and—despite the gawking from all the other customers and clerks, and that one owl that swooped down from the rafters and tried to make off with my scalp—I was able to acquire all the cheese I wanted—in both wheel and log form.
I arrived home uneventfully, hung up my asshats and bolo tie, stripped my leisure suit off, pet my scaly ol’ kerfrumpt, flapped my arms wildly to scare all the owls out of my rafters, and plopped myself down at the dinner table with all my wheels and logs of cheese. I dug in. Animal-like chewing and gulping and gurgling and swallowing noises filled my eating hall, echoed off the walls, and frightened off the owls again. My kerfrumpt salivated from her eating-snout under the table. I tossed her an entire wheel of feta then dug into my own. The cheese-eating was immense, intense, and went on for hours. The slavering, slobbering noises shook the whole neighborhood. At last, I made one final sound: A windowpane-rattling belch. My kerfrumpt queeged in reply.
Sated, satiated, and satisfied that I wouldn’t need to perch myself atop any toilets for 2+ weeks now, I decided I would really wang chung tonight—so again donning my asshats and leisure suit, out I went.
[Feetnote: August 10 was 8,192 days since the curious word slurry that is my blog first hit the ol’ Internet on March 7, 1999. To a normal person, this event would pass unnoticed. But to a six-foot-tall man–squirrel who had his analog brain replaced with a digital positronic brain in order to survive the coming Great Noöclasm of 2186… numbers like 1,024, 2,048, 8,192, and 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 are irresistible—like truffles to a truffle hog or John Kerry to a kerfrumpt! August 10, 2008 was also the last entry my addled analog pate emitted until March 7, 2010! These and other numerological coincidences this week sent me into a gibbering, gonad-hodling panic until my scaly ol’ kerfrumpt dislodged me from my hiding place with her eating-snout. The rest of this tale is, as they say, history!]