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So Slimpsy were
a-wanderin’ in the bogey fields that night. He shick and shack and
shook his gubery knick-knacks for all he was worth, wonderin’ and
wanderin’.
What was ol’ Slimpsy wonderin’? Well,
scrape the rind from the moon if he weren’t wonderin’ where to park
his stitch-gabbled ass that night, for his big yella gourd house was
all swamped over with water and gourd fibers from the last rainfall.
Now, as you might surmise from the fact
that ol’ Slimpsy usually parked his ass in a hollowed-out gourd, he
weren’t no bigger than a squirrel’s tin lunch pail. But don’t tell
him I told you that! For Slimpsy hates the squirrely folk, right
enough. He greets their kind with these harsh words:
“Squirrel-kind, you take a flyin’ screw at
the moon!”
So you just know those squirrels got no use
for Slimpsy, either. It goes back a long ways, longer than the
spiderweb strings that fly the stars like kites, so don’t you even
ask.
Slimpsy sneezed and nearly blew hisself
back out the other side of the bogey fields. A wheeze and a loogie-hock,
and he was just feelin’ most miserable for his very tiny self.
Slimpsy nabbed a damp stalk of sour-fly weed, ripped it out of the
slushy earth, and brandished it at the deep night sky, screaming:
“DAMMIT.”
He throttled that stalk of sour-fly weed,
poked it at each star, but couldn’t think of anything else to say.
It wasn’t doing a damn bit of good, so he dropped it and continued
on his way. He muttered unwords in the special mystic language of
the Boogins family that set all the weeds and wildflowers withering
and wilting, turning to green scribbles in the mud. Pretty soon, ol’
Slimpsy was the only thing upright in the bogey fields. He picked
his sharp horn of a nose with a pinky finger and flicked the results
at a pockmark in the wet earth, idly hoping a booger tree would grow
and make all the animal folk sick from its salty blossoms. Deer, in
particular, can’t resist booger tree blossoms, and never seem to
remember how much it churns up their stomachs later.
A glint! A triangle of light sparking by
the thorn bushes! Slimpsy ran slopfoot slopfoot, because it was
starting to rain again. Big fat drops on his head, nearly braining
him a good one each time. He drew near and saw it was a tin soup can
on its side. All dry inside, and just the right size for Slimpsy
Boogins. But could he park his stitch-gabbled ass in that tin can?
Poorly, sadly, simply, NO. He listened to
the music the rain made hitting the tin. Ping pang ding. Ching-ching
dring. A tear welled up in Slimpsy’s eye, for a Boogins can only
take shelter in a living thing. Slimpsy thought, “Cans ain’t living.
They ain’t even natural. They’s man-made and that’s a poor thing.”
So he went in underneath the thorn bushes
because the rain was really starting to pick up. But next thing he
knew, his feet were all tangled in the gnarled-knuckle roots, and
those pokey little thorns were pickin’ and scratchin’ at his
clothes. He thrashed a wild little “Lemme-out!” jig and scooted back
out from underneath those bushes. He thought he heard laughing.
He turned and peered into the forest. The
raindrops pelted him. It was drier in there, amongst the big tall
trees. But Slimpsy usually kept clear of those trees because of can
you guess what?
Squirrels.
“Well, they can just take a flyin’ screw at
the moon!” he huffed, and stomped away into the trees anyway. He
stomped right up to the laughing tree and banged on the side of it,
right next to the little chewed-out hole. Little squirrel-tooth chew
marks.
(TOK TOK TOK, went Slimpsy’s wee fist.)
“Squirrel-folk! Squirrel-folk, you come down and get me in there! I
ain’t tellin’ ya to take a flyin’ screw at the moon, I’m just wantin’
a place to park my ass. It’s wet and cold and my yella gourd-house
is all mushed out. Hey! Squirrel-folk!”
The laughter had stopped, and he waited for
an invitation. Booginses can’t just slip into other folks’ abodes
without a proper-like invite. Slimpsy scooped a stray acorn from the
ground and chucked it high at the tree. K-THOK.
Finally, a weary voice piped, “Slimpsy
Sprite, what you want?!” and two yellow eyes glared from that little
hole.
“I’m tellin’ ya, I’m mushed outta my house!
I needs me a shelter til the rain stops!”
A chattering conference was held quickly
inside the old tree. Then a rust-colored paw stuck itself out
beneath Slimpsy’s nose and a voice barked, “Well, come on, then! Get
your ass in here. But no Boogins spell-casting, or we’ll bury you
deep in the ground like a nut, and even you with your spiky little
claws won’t be able to dig yourself out!”
So that’s how Slimpsy came to spend the
night in a hollowed-out tree with a squirrel family, despite the
fact that they all smelled pretty rotten to each other. Those
squirrel tunnels are pretty narrow and tight, and whenever Slimpsy
would scoot from one room to the next, if he happened to meet a
squirrel in the passageway the both of them would just shudder and
quake if fur touched sprite.
And remember, Slimpsy weren’t much bigger than a squirrel’s tin
lunch pail, so those furry folk just towered and glowered over him
in the common rooms of that hollow tree. Eyes all yellow like
eggyolks, sizzling with warnings. Slimpsy muttered, but never cast a
single spell. He didn’t want to end up stuck deep in the earth like
an acorn!
He curled up at last in an empty room with
leaves hanging on the walls like tapestries. Red-gold, gold-red, and
all the colors in between. It made Slimpsy think back to the fall,
and then as his thoughts dripped off into a pool of sleep, he
thought even further back. In a dream he remembered something
forgotten.
Many hundreds of years ago, when Slimpsy
was a young sprite, he lived in another gourd-house. Only this one
weren’t yellow. It were a greeny-white like something glowing sickly
in a deep dank cave. Slimpsy loved that greeny-white gourd! He had
hollowed it out proper and loved the soft feel of it against his
butt, and the musty, frusty smell of its ever-so-slowly rotting
flesh.
Now, all of this was before Slimpsy hated
the squirrely folk. He had no reason to care either way. That is,
until one rainy night when a squirrel poked at Slimpsy’s gourd-house
and squeaked, “Oh, please, Mister Slimpsy Sprite! It’s rainy wet and
I am cold! Weasels have stolen my home from me, and I have nowhere
to go!”
So after much grumbling, Slimpsy had found
himself crammed fold-leggy toe-jab into that gourd with a member of
the furry folk. And all night it was poke-eye “Sorry-sorry!”
poke-eye “Sorry-sorry!”
Well, when morning came and Slimpsy cracked
open an eyefull, he immediately thought it seemed less crowded. Then
he saw why.
The beautiful greeny-white cave-glow gourd
was gone! All et up by that nasty little squirrel! The only trace of
it left were a few chunky crumbs of gourd-flesh, and Slimpsy was a-sittin’
on those! The rain had stopped, and the squirrel (his nasty self)
was standing there by Slimpsy, nosing at the last few crumbs, and
bumping Slimpsy’s ass with his cold little nose. When the squirrel
saw Slimpsy’s eyes open, he squeaked:
“Oops. Sorry! I was hungry.” and scampered
off into the trees, a criminal on the run.
But Slimpsy never caught that same squirrel
again, so from that day forward his hatred for the squirrely folk
was begun. Shakin’ his spiky, spritely fist and hollerin’ “You
squirrel-kind, you take a flyin’ screw at the moon!”
Well, this was the dream, a memory-dream
beneath autumn leaves in a squirrel’s tree. So Slimpsy shot upright,
knuckled his eyes, and gazed around hisself with a not-knowin’-what-to-do
kinda wonder. The remembering made him feel all spookly and fulla
funny tickles. Like anger tickles, and tickles of regret. Tickles of
longing for that old greeny-white gourd.
Slimpsy had these ideas, sharp as tacks in
his skull. Mean, red, revenge kinda ideas. Like eating all the
acorns stored in the tree while the squirrel-kind slept! Or gnawing
a slice through the base of the tree, beaver-like, so that it’d
topple at the slightest hitch. Or, even worse, wrapping all the
squirrel-babies up in a sack and stickin’ ‘em deep in the mud, like
the squirrels had threatened to do to Slimpsy.
And then Slimpsy just couldn’t keep hisself
from thinkin’ on the kindness of those squirrely folk for putting
him up for the night. Because all those hundreds of years back,
Slimpsy had felt pretty kind all right when he let that bad squirrel
sleep in his gourd. He saw how it would be just as bad of him to
slip a meanness in now as it had been for that old squirrel to slip
a meanness in on him.
When the squirrel-folk got up and a-movin’
that morning, they found the room with the tapestry leaves empty,
save for a shaving of bark on the floor, with a message from Slimpsy
scrawled across it with a spiky-sharp claw.
“Skwirrrl-kind: Dont go eatin gords.”
Well, those furry folk hooted and hollered
with chattery laughter over that one. They took it as a snot-nosed
jab from a snot-nosed sprite. Little did they know it was an
almost-friendly warning made in all serious-type thought. For, as
Slimpsy scrabbled his way out through those squirrel tunnels and
back into the forest, he was a-mutterin’ and a spellin’ for all he
was worth. Mystic language of the Boogins family! And the spell was
cast only on those squirrels who should make the mistake of eatin’ a
gourd. ANY gourd, not even just a Slimpsy gourd. The magic
would make a squirrel’s eyeballs light on fire if gourd flesh
touched squirrel tongue!
So he had warned ‘em, fair and square. And
now Slimpsy no longer shouts, “Squirrel-kind, you take a flyin’
screw at the moon!” because why should he need to? All he has to do
is sit back on his tiny, bony little haunches in his brand new
slowly rotting orange-ish gourd and wait to hear a squirrel run by
screaming with his eyeballs a-fire. Because then Slimpsy will know
that the right squirrel has been punished for the crime of gourd-eatin’.
THE END
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