A wild eep out of place and time
Moofed at on September 15, 2024.
And so there I was, merrily pumping gas into my thirsty and overheated car, with nary a care in the world, when suddenly a wild eep rang out.
“Eep!” It went.
I grinsped—clenched!—even yerked!—and looked around wildly myself. Where did such an ancient sound come from? Was someone on the other side of this humble gas pump carrying a 1990s Macintosh around with them, and—while they were pumping gas?!—it suddenly decided to blurt out this wild, wild eeping sound?
I had to get to the bottom of this at flunce, before my frantic looking-around-wildly made my nose fly off.
Suppressing my yerking at last—and a desire to eep wildly myself!—and then employing my shrewdest, most cunning peering skills, I peered carefully around the edge of the pump. There was no one there with a computer. There was a man, rather duck-like in appearance, wearing a large Technicolor dreamcoat and sporting a similarly colorful cell phone in one hand. But there was no large, cumbersome 1990s Macintosh in his other hand, nor was there one on his head (which is where I keep my iMac when I want to lug it around). There was also a seven-foot-tall woman from Ouagadougou, but I dismissed her as mere hallucination.
I furrowed my eyebrows in dubious ponderment. Had this anatine man set his smell phone’s ringtone to a wild eep? If so, why an eep? Why not a sosumi? Why not an indigo or a boing… or a moof? Certainly—given the man’s colorful and ducky appearance!—he should have gone with a quack! I pondered more.
Don’t get me wrong, I was glad and heartened that this classic sound clip from the 1990s was still alive and well in the bleak hellscape that we’re currently all trapped and forced to live in. But the wild eep’s continued existence did not explain why it continued to exist, why here, and why of all times, now. Why did the eep still eep? There must be more to this than mere nostalgia—perhaps the man was a time-traveler, bringing the joys of the 1990s forward to the horrible anuses of the 2020s. (And what of the seven-foot-tall Ouagadougouan woman? How did she fit into this?)
No—too banal, too ordinary, I thought and dismissed the idea. Time-travelers were nothing new around here. Instead, perhaps he was some kind of pied piper who used the sound of classic Macintoshes to mesmerize and captivate rats and children, so he could lead them back to his lair and feed them to each other! (Or to his seven-foot-long pet python.) That made a bit more sense. In fact, for a year like 2024, it made all too much sense! I pondered harder. I pondered deeper. I pondered more and more. My eyebrows all piled up in one solid furrow.
Then the true horror of it all dawned on me. He was a time-traveling pied piper! And I, being both a large rat and a twelve-year-old boy in a doofus-shaped man’s body, had almost succumbed to his nefarious spell of wild, wild eeping! I grinsped and clenched and yerked. My eyes popped and my eyebrows shot off in every direction. I started emitting panicked moofing noises—each one rising from a low, dolorous moo to a loud, sonorous woof. If that wouldn’t signal my distress and attract every nearby dog, cow, and dogcow to come trample this nefarious piping fiend before he stole all of my town’s children (and rats!), nothing would.
Yet all it did was make the man—this rather canardesque man, sporting a rather ordinary and un-duck-like phone—peer back at me. And he did so more askance than I had peered at him. His dreamcoat shimmered. The statuesque Burkinabè had vanished.
Totally forgetting about my car, I ran off in a wild eeping panic myself.
Someone asked me once, “Can you hear that too, Pnårp?” I shot back: “No! Maybe it’s just acouasm? Or another monkey orgasm?”
Someone asked me once, “Can I ask you one question, Pnårp?” I shot back: “Yes! But what has that got to do with Charles Darwin’s theories on the origin of the Babadook?”
Someone asked me once, “Why are you still here, Pnårp?” I shot back: “Because! If the person who named the ‘walkie-talkie’ had named stamps, would he have called them ‘lickie-stickies’? Would he have called socks ‘feetie-heaties’? Would he have called bras ‘breastie-nesties’?”
This is when that someone stopped talking to me.