The stench of failure
Stunk up on March 31, 2024.
The horrible stench of failure had been replaced with the slightly less noxious stench of wet rabbit. I sat in my Hopeless Slack-Ass® recliner, contemplating this subtle change, when suddenly something wholly unexpected—something fully unanticipated and entirely unpredicted—transcurred a mere 7.17 feet away. (They were very average feet.)
A lupanthromonius aardwolf wriggled under my front door, stood before me, and—girt about the paps with glee—informed me that my ceiling clock had packed up his things and lit out for Athabasca. The aardwolf then wriggled back out without even opening the door. I gave chase, trying to wriggle after it. But I didn’t fit under the door. And opening the door was out of the question for reasons I can’t even begin to cataphrate into words. (These are words. [No, really.]) The Greek tragedy chorus deeply ensconced within my brain wriggled out to remind me it was time to apostatize and tergiversate again, and so I did. Things would never be the same. My dishwasher pangolin suddenly detonated a donut, and—hoo boy, that made a scaly mess!—I had to clean it all up with a spork-shaped toothbrush.
Again the possibility of rabbit starvation reared its ugly head; I had been eating nothing but Trix for the past two weeks. My PhD in theoretical lagomorphology was no help. Nor was Becasue in her dominatrix outfit, but it was rather diverting. And then when she stepped on my face, I forgot about starving completely. (They were very big feet.)
I still wasn’t sure how to truss all these disparate thoughts together into a coherent aggrumulation, but I would try. Or die hooting.
That’s when I found the thing resting quietly in my kitchen sink: A final farewell gift from that dishwasher pangolin before he tried to light out for Athabasca but accidentally blew himself up nibbling a donut instead. I wasn’t sure what this gift was. It looked like someone had soaked an entire crate of stale Trix in used motor oil. It smelled like someone had soaked a dozen horse feet in avgas and turpentine. And it tasted like someone had soaked nutraloaf in Lemon Lift and jammed the resulting spongy mass full of burned Tootsie Pops. Not even Greta Thunberg’s sordid affair with Rick Santorum could exude a full-on sensory assault like this. (And no one could explain why I tasted it, either. Not even me.)
I tried to send it down the drain but not even my garbage disposal could handle the discophony. A plumber was called, who promptly died on the spot. A coroner was called to collect the corpse, who also promptly died on the spot. A second coroner was called, and… Fearing my kitchen would soon fill up with corpses rivaling Hank Morgan’s cave, I stopped calling people and just walled off the room with a thousand-thousand square feet of brick and mortar. (They were very small feet. And they weren’t very square either.)
Sprintermmertumng continued as it rained and snowed at the same time this week. The Sun was out and the wind blew. Hailstones the size of direhare droppings fell from the sky. Sleet like direhare diarrhea followed. The weathermen were predicting a heat wave followed by a cold snap—much more snow, sleet, rain, hail, snail, and even slail would then follow. Sprintermmertumng would drive us all batty. And then the direbats would come and drain us all of our precious blood.
Before me, where that aardwolf had stood, was now a monolith made of solid lithium. It would surely satisfy my appetite for apatite and lithic monoliths! But where was the chalcolith made of aged stone and bronze? I wanted more—I yearned for more minerals. All I could find were colorful eggs littering my front yard, back yard, and all sixteen side yards. I cracked one open, thoughts of noshing upon its yolky goodness pattering around in my brainpan—but the execrable egg turned out to be full of spiders instead! Thousands upon thousands of tiny spiders!
I hid in a hole in the ground—a spider-free one, luckily!—and waited for them all to blow away on the wind. But there was no wind now—just a dead heat. So, I dug deeper—and deeper—and deeper still. Then I hit more spiders. I rocketed out of that hole like a bull moose in heat. (Or was it a bowl mouse in heat?) Either way, I rocketed out of that hole like a bubal hartebeest shot from a cannon.
I landed on my roolf. The wind picked up. And again I was surrounded by spiders. They began to sing.
The demented Democrats and backwards Яepublicans continued their endless demonstrating and remonstrating this week. One of them was obsessively touting his accomplishments while flouting every law, rule, and convention—touting and flouting, flouting and touting, endlessly in an uncouth loop. The other gadabout was blaming climate change for the extinction of horse-drawn carriages, moose-drawn trolleys, and even wooden molasses barrels (to say nothing about the unprecedented drop in mole asses since 1990). This wasn’t as much as a howler as when President Piggy-Man false claimed that Halloween masks were effective at stopping the spread of COVID-19, but it was close.
But it was curious—the precipitous drop in mole asses—wasn’t it? I thought long and hard about it. Inflation couldn’t be blamed. Boeing couldn’t be blamed. Not even that bridge that wouldn’t move out of the way fast enough could be blamed. Charles Darwin’s lesser-known work on the origin of shuggoths offered scant explanation for any of this, although it could drive a person mad, too. The tergiversation continued unabated on the television. I changed the channel.
Then I realized: Maybe it was all the santorum dripping down the walls that was the source of that doG-awful stench.
At last, S’munday had arrived again. Easter was upon us, Becasue and I, bearing down like a killer rabbit hurling hard-boiled eggs at our foreheads. Together we reminisced about Easters past with our families: Her, Easter egg hunts in the endless cornfields of Squirrel Blind, W. Va. And me, each Easter ending with colorfully decorated hard-boiled eggs jammed in unusual and surprising places courtesy of my dear sister Plårp. After a brunch of the meatiest rabbit, we sat down to the traditional dessert: Hot cross buns and grasshopper pie. This year I learned that there is no moose in grasshopper pie, because it’s a mousse, not moose. But there are lots of grasshoppers.
“Ohh, what am I going to do with that moose in my breezeway now?” I whined. “Can I make hotdogs out of it? Hamburger? Mincemoose pie? Can I feed it to Nurdlebutt? Does moose hide make good rugs? Can I…” I was full of half-baked ideas—each more half-baked than the last. Some were even wholly raw.
“Maybe you should bring it back to the woods where you found it,” My big little redheaded huzzey-muffet suggested. She was always full of sensible suggestions—each more sensible than the last.
“But how am I going to get my money back that way?!” I shot back, panic rising. I didn’t want to lose the moolah I had spent on baiting and trapping that moose. Those maple leaves were expensive!
So the moose went up on Craigslist for the low, low price of 157 simoleons and 99 cents. No one bit, so the moose went up on eBay next. No one bit, so the moose went up into my attic to be stowed away for next year. The moose bit me, so back on eBay I went to buy a moose muzzle. Then back I went again to buy a year’s supply of maple leaves, so the moose wouldn’t eat my Christmas tree and all the tinsel stowed up here. Then I bought a saddle so I could ride my moose around the house whenever I was in the mood.
The horrible stench of failure had been replaced with the sweet, sweet stench of victory. I got to keep my moose and eat it too.
My ubblabumptuous huzzey-muffet’s protestations at this moose-keeping plan made it clear she was none too pleased with it—especially after the moose got to clattering around above our heads at all hours of the day. But with enough sound-proofing I was sure the discordant cacophony would be tolerable. That’s how Becasue ended up locked in that new sound-proof booth I built on the ninth floor. And when she escaped, that’s how I ended up once again hanging from the rafters like a bat. Much frantic meeping and hooting ensued, followed by much squiffling and babbling, begging and apologizing, and finally moose-freeing, but it would all be worth it in the end. (Or… would it?)
[Feetnote: My best efforts to bribe the calendar-makers to quit it with these five-Sunday months has, however, been a smashing success. They promise me that we’ll never have another one! This is cause to celebrate! Woo-hoo-hey! Woo-hoo, woo-hoo, woo-hoo-hoo-hey!]