We open our scene with Ping is He on his back in a kiddie wading pool,
simming lazy circles in the bright sunshine.  Puma is about twenty feet
away under the thick stand of purple iris blossoms, sitting in a lotus
position with her eyes closed, meditating.  She doesn't find the
justaposition funny at all.  Not.  At..  All.  .Iris blossoms, lotus
posotion?  Never mind.  Ping tried.  (Duuude...That Puma needs a latte
or something.....)
 
ANYWAY, aslo sitting in the very middle of the wading pool are two very
wet otters.  The Otters.  Their names?  The Otters.  If you really want
to get specific, they are brothers, known as first Otter and second
Otter and they belong about twenty five miles south in the Worcester
Eco-Tarium, but we won't go there.  Apparenttly they have taken the day
off.
 
The first Otter speaks: "Dear Miss Holly-minks have white chins (White
chins!  interrupts the second Otter) or white bibs".  The first Otter
turns veeeery slowly in a way that is not good in an otter and says "May
I finish, please?" The second Otter merely harrumphs, and submerges,
making Ping experience something that to him feels like the Poseidon
Adventure.  (Think BLAWWWG!_ACK!)
 
The First Otter twiches his nose, blinks his sleepy eyes and begins
again.  ""Miss Holly-minks *do* live in South Carolina, though I don't
know any personally."  The second Otter mutters distractedly "No, no.
Don't know any personally, don't believe so." (Ping is He, looking like
a drowned rat, is trying to escape the wading pool while simultaneously
coughing and kicking with his back legs, using his rear claws to gouge
the plastic.  He is beyond speech.) (The sound of giggling can be heard
from the iris patch.)
 
The first Otter closes one eye, tilts his head and thinks deeply.  "If I
am not mistaken, the fisher cat <http://home.mcn.net/%7Ewtu/fisher.html>
does not range north of Virginia, which would exclude it as your mystery
mustellid...The second Otter at that moment is in a fight with Ping is
He.  Both are on the pavement outside of the wading pool now and Ping
is doing everything he can to make it clear that he does NOT want CPR,
especially from a giagantic organism that consumes fish ...laughter,
rarely heard laughter, a bit rusty in tune is now heard from beneath
the iris blossoms.  (A-hee-hee-hee-haw-haw-haw!)
 
The first Otter shakes his head, throwing off drops of water that look
like diamonds in the sunshine.  He says with a very serious expression,
"Might I suggest the nocturnal presence of an otter, Miss Holly?  And
might I suggest that you (and other like-minded primates) visit this
site and see our adorable baby Heather
<http://www.otter.org/otterframes.html>?  Please know that you could
adopt Heather ("Or Sith or Thistle!"interjects the second Otter while
pinning Ping to the ground and attempting to inflate him between
breaths.)
 
"Yes, yes, any or all of the three, actually" says the first Otter,
"for a very reasonable sum with your American credit card that would
automatically" ("Yes, autonmatically!" grunted the second Otter, still
trying to pin Ping to the ground and not be torn to slivers) "convert
your currency to ours with no effort to you.  Please at least look at
baby Heather, and out gallery of luminaries.  I thank you for your time"
 
Ping, having slithered away from the well meaning second Otter runs away
as fast as a wet ferret can run, but not before crashing into Puma, now
prostrate, helpless with laughter on the ground beneath the blooming
irises.  He leaves a track of muddy prints all across her front like a
ladder.
 
For Uncle Bobby Gone to Rest 5/28/2006
His last wish was to learn to read.
Sadly, he needed more time than he had left. But he tried.
He was fifty-five.
 
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 5259]