2194. Life in the swamp

Ever since Janet had been a tadpole she had greatly admired the head frog, Queen Japonica. Queen Japonica’s greatest feature was that she didn’t let fear rule her life. If it was a sunny day she would bask in the shallow waters with the water barely covering her back.

“It is idyllic lying in both water and sunshine. Only a fool would fear the wading birds messing around in the swamp. Fear of wading oystercatchers is an unnecessary fear. I need to rest after laying so many eggs. Besides, as their name suggests, oystercatchers aren’t interested in frogs.”

And now Janet herself had grown into a stunningly beautiful frog. She still admired Queen Japonica greatly.

“That frog is almost a goddess,” said Janet. “She fears nothing, and rightly so.”

It therefore came as a great surprise when Charlie, the Head Sycophant in the Frog Court, approached Janet, bowed low and said, “Your Majesty – you are now queen.”

“Goodness gracious,” declared Janet. “What on earth happened to that magnificent queen we had?”

“Sadly, she passed away last Friday.”

“I first shall mourn for the late Queen Japonica,” said Janet.

“Japonica?” declared a surprised Head Sycophant. “Japonica was queen forty frogs ago. Queen Frogs keep getting eating by oystercatchers while basking in the sun. However I can understand your misunderstanding; we frogs all look the same.”

2193. I’m pleased to be a bee

Let me tell you; I just love being a bee. Some say that the Queen Bee is a slave-driver, but I can say without a skerrick of doubt – I’m no slave. My job is to go around collecting pollen. I love it, love it. It gives me a buzz.

And it’s so interesting. My area of expertise is a nearby flower garden. There’s such variety. One day it’s a poppy and the next day it’s an agapanthus. I like to mix up the pollen from all sorts. Of course, I get criticized for it: “This is primarily a tea-tree hive,” the other bees claim. “We are here to make tea-tree honey. It’s one of the more expensive varieties in shops” But I don’t care. A little bit of variety never hurt anyone.

Just the other day the Queen Bee commended me for my dedication to duty. I said, “It’s nothing Your Majesty. I am here to serve and it’s an honour to work for you.”

The other bees called me a “greaser”; I was greasing up the Queen because I wanted a promotion. How silly! There’s really no higher for a female worker bee to go. I’m content with my lot. How awful to be a drone. Those males sit around doing nothing but wait for an opportunity to do their business.

The other day, Alexandra was attacked by a human smashing around a rolled up newspaper. She had no option but to sting. But that’s the irony of being a bee; one stings to save ones life and having stung, one dies. Alexander passed away quite fast after her dramatic ordeal. The stinging was so sudden and so sad.

 Look, I haven’t got all day to talk. I have to get off to my garden. There’s a lady there now picking flowers. They’re laden with pollen. I’ll just take a quick dip in a flower before she takes the flowers off somewhere…

I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it. It was in self-defence.

1969. Nesting season

Squaggle Quack was a duck. More particularly, he was a drake. And what a fine drake he was! Mrs. Quack was known as Mrs. Quack, although her closest friends called her Seaxburh. She was named after Queen Seaxburh, an ancient Queen of Wessex. Her maiden name was Hrafnkelsdóttir. Very few know that.

The time had come for Squaggle and Seaxburh to start a family. The first priority was to choose a site for the nest. What a shamozzles! They couldn’t agree. Squaggle wanted the nest in the long grass on the side of a road.

“It’s dangerous,” said Seaxburh. “And there’s absolutely no view. What about on the side of that hill where I can enjoy the view of the valley as I sit on the eggs for four weeks?”

The discussion raged for several days. In the end, Squaggle won. A nest was made on the side of the road, with no view, and open to the elements.

“I think we should have eleven eggs,” suggested Squaggle.

“But I had my heart set on nine eggs,” said Seaxburh. In the end, Squaggle won. Eleven eggs were laid.

Seaxburh began the marathon of sitting on eleven eggs in a cold nest next to the road. It was the most boring thing she had ever done in her life. So uninteresting! So testing! And the rain! You’ve no idea!

In the meantime, Squaggle had flown off at the beginning of the sitting session and never bothered to come back. He’d done his part.

When the eleven ducklings hatched, Seaxburh told them that their family name was Seaxburhsdóttir or Seaxburhssen. Good on you, Seaxburh!

1911. How wonderful to be beautiful!

I am a butterfly. Not just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill butterfly. I am gorgeous! I am dazzling! I am one of those things when humans see me they exclaim, “How could such a thing of beauty evolve out of a mere pile of sludge?”

It’s quite extraordinary how all I have to do is flaunt my beauty on a flower and cameras start to click. I’m sure if I was epileptic the flashing would cause a seizure. All I need do is gently flap my wings to attract attention. I have heard, at least I have been told, that to flap my wings too quickly would cause many a photograph to become blurred. So I flap my wings in a slow and stylish manner. Of course nothing disappoints me more if a photograph captures the moment when my wings are closed. It is a waste of exquisiteness.

One other thing about wing flapping that I have learned over the summer is to be careful not to flap the wings in too seductive a manner. Once I did that and clearly it blinded Mr. Butterfly who accidently landed on top of me. What a kafuffle!

So as you can see, I am exceedingly content with my lot in life. I have only one unfulfilled desire. I suspect it is the desire of many a butterfly – even ones not as beautiful as me – and that is to have a pin stuck through my abdomen and be put in a glass cabinet. Such a wondrous fate happens to a few chosen. How brilliant it would be to have my beauty preserved for an eternity!

Here comes yet another admiring fan up the garden path. I shall gently flap.

Ouch!

1867. The life of a grasshopper sucks

(Note to faithful followers: After 7 years I’ve fiddled around with the “About” section, so it’s different in places. Some of you over the years have kindly given likes and some have kindly commented. If you want to change your comment or like because of the changes in the page please feel free. I’m happy (though sad) to delete your comment if you would want that. P.S. There’s no nudity on the page.)

Quite frankly the life of a grasshopper sucks. I’ve spend all summer hopping from dahlia flower to dahlia flower. I can eke out a living by sipping a bit of the scant amount of nectar in each bloom. Apparently that process helps with the fertilization of the seed head as well, but the lady who thinks she owns the garden keeps coming out of the house with secateurs and cutting the dead seed heads off. I feel redundant and useless.

And now look at me. Everything is dead and shrivelled up. There’s hardly a sip of anything left to survive on. I know I’ll die before winter is over, simply because of cold and starvation. Here’s a photo of me on a dead branch of Jerusalem artichoke.

As I said, it’s no fun being a grasshopper. There were three of us in this garden at the start of last summer and then there were two – just me and Mrs. Grasshopper. We had a clutch of eggs and out popped a multitude of offspring. One by one they seemed to disappear. There was a lot of competition for food, and sometimes I wondered if Mrs. Grasshopper wasn’t eating her own babies. But in the end I decided that was not the case. We’re not humans. We act responsibly. And then suddenly Mrs. Grasshopper herself disappeared.

The problem is our colour. We’re bright green and stick out like a sore thumb once the foliage dies off. Some insects change colour and survive, but we have not been blessed with that know-how. I suspect the local song thrush may have got Mrs. Grasshopper. That wretched thrush has been hanging around for months. It might be responsible for the missing children as well. There’s no warning. The thrush’s appetite seems to be voracious. It’s rapacious and vociferous. One minute you’re there looking for nectar and the next minute you’re

1837. Mother Thrush’s baby, Guzzle-Beak

“Now, now, Guzzle-Beak,” said Mother Thrush to her baby in the nest. “You must learn not to complain about your food. It doesn’t matter if you find a bit of lettuce in your caterpillar. Just quietly eat it and things will be fine. It won’t kill you.”

“Look at what happened to your brothers and sisters. There were five of you at the start, and they complained about the food. Next thing, they disappeared. It’s a nasty world out there and we must learn to be grateful for small mercies.”

“Your father and I have worn ourselves to a frazzle finding food for you. So a bit of appreciation wouldn’t go amiss. Taking a positive attitude to things will see you right in life. You’ll go places.”

Just then a hawk swooped down from nowhere, grabbed Guzzle-Beak in its talons, and flew off.

“Oh well,” sighed Mother Thrush eating the caterpillar she had brought for her baby and spitting out the bit of lettuce that was mixed in, “Mr. Thrush and I shall start a second clutch tomorrow.”

1538: Lancelot Grope’s calling

(The opening sentence for this story was suggested by Nitin at Fighting the Dying Light. If you want to join in the fun of suggesting a future opening sentence for these stories, click here for a peek as to what’s what.)

When he looked at the clown in his greens and reds, his raging coulrophilia kicked in. Lancelot Grope couldn’t help it. He was only too pleased that he himself was wearing baggy clown’s trousers.

Lancelot’s coulrophilia had made his teenage years almost unbearable. The trouble had been that his mother had been obsessed with a relatively muscular trapeze artist named Standish Nikolayevich, and Lancelot was dragged from one circus performance to another. It was okay for his sister to admit that she was obsessed with circus horses (and for his mother to be obsessed with Standish Nikolayevich) but to admit to coulrophilia was another thing altogether. Things came to a head when Cocoa Craven Hook, one of Lancelot’s favourite clowns, took Lancelot out the back.

Cocoa Craven Hook was wearing his greens and reds and looked amazing.

“Judging from looking at your trousers,” said Cocoa, “you seem to be pretty enthusiastic about clowning. Can I show you a thing or two? Let me pull a surprise out of my pocket.”

Suddenly a bunch of flowers appeared from nowhere. One of the flowers squirted water in Lancelot’s face. Lancelot laughed.

“I’ll show you how it’s done,” said Cocoa kindly. “First let me put these flowers in your pocket.”

Lancelot was hooked. He’d never experienced anything quite so exciting. There was no going back. He would be a coulrophiliac for life. Coulrophilia would be his life’s calling. He would use it to cure those who suffered from coulrophobia. And indeed he did.

Today, especially in Hollywood, there’s many a former coulrophobiac who is now a practising coulrophiliac. They’re in the News, and some of them even made it to the circus.

1537: The trials of Andrea

(The opening sentence for this story was suggested by Lindsey at Itching for Hitching. If you want to join in the fun of suggesting a future opening sentence for these stories, click here for a peek as to what’s what.)

She sighed deeply and wondered if this would ever stop. This was the third time this afternoon that Andrea’s husband, Thomas, had phoned the Waste Management Company and let them have it.

“Why was my trash taken away late last Wednesday? You call yourself a garbologist?”

“Do you think you can take the trash away when you like? Wednesday morning is the time stipulated that the trash will be picked up at the gate. I don’t care if it was Christmas Day – it was Wednesday.”

“The guy driving the trash truck needs a bomb under him. I wished him good morning and he grunted at me like I was a.. a pig… Where’s the customer service?”

“Don’t you think, dear,” suggested Andrea to Thomas once he had put the phone down, “don’t you think you could just let these people get on with their job? They seem to do it reliably enough.”

“Rubbish,” said Thomas. “I want better service than that.”

When Thomas dialled the number a fourth time, Andrea had had enough.

“I’m going into town,” she said, “to the library. I shall return once all this nonsense is over.”

“You don’t understand,” said Thomas.

Andrea drove into town. What a trial the trash collection company saga had become. She sighed deeply and wondered if this would ever stop. It had been going on ever since her husband had bought the Waste Management Company almost a month ago.

1536: A real s.o.b.

(The opening sentence for this story was suggested by Sarah Angleton. If you want to join in the fun of suggesting a future opening sentence for these stories, click here for a peek as to what’s what.)

Jim Mackey was a real s.o.b., but that wasn’t what Rudy admired about him. Jim and Rudy had known each other since they were at school. In fact when they started school together aged six, Jim had shown Rudy how to chew on a bit of paper, roll it into a ball, put it in the hollow tube of a ballpoint pen, and blow it at enormous speed at the teacher when she wasn’t looking.

“Ouch! Who shot the pea-shooter?” asked the teacher.

“It was Rudy, Miss,” said Jim.

“Jim Mackey, you are a good boy for telling the truth.” She gave him a chocolate fish as a reward. “As for you, Rudy, you are a wicked, wicked boy.”

Jim would betray any friend for a chocolate fish. He would set up other students to do dastardly deeds and then tell on them. It was a method that served him well now that he was all grown. He was an asshole. He was an archbastard. He would arrange for criminals to steal and would then report them to the police. He got rich on the crimes of others.

But things came to a head when Jim Mackey reported to the police that Rudy’s wife was peddling drugs. Rudy shot Jim Mackey dead. There was blood everywhere. Being dead was what Rudy most admired about that s.o.b.

1535: Last word

(The opening sentence for this story was suggested by Chelsea Owens. If you want to join in the fun of suggesting a future opening sentence for these stories, click here for a peek as to what’s what.)

The esteemed and highly intelligent host limited them to one sentence each. “The esteemed and highly intelligent host” – yeah, right. He had a gun in his hand and had lined the three of them up against the wall. They were the enemies of the people.

“You’re limited to one sentence each before you get shot.” He was excited. You could tell he was excited. He was short of breath, and even though he’d done this dozens of times before you could tell he still got excited about it. “One sentence each so think about it carefully.”

Johnny Smith, who had been arrested on trumped up charges of plotting to hack into the Premier’s computer, spoke first. “Quite frankly I don’t give a crap about having to say…”

BANG!

Angela McKay was next. “There are a few points I’d like to make…”

BANG!

Only Freddie Flood was left. “I know where there’s buried treasure,” he said.

He’s still alive today, although not extremely comfortable.