When we left off....

It was a gentle, August summer night in central Massachusetts. The
Sunflowers in the hoomin's vegetable garden showed pale, fringed faces
to the moon, and in the forest surrounding the back yard white tailed
deer lay down on their bellies and slept, safe deep in the tangle of
rhododendron and hemlock. The two neighborhood owls hooted softly back
and forth, and the soft-furred field mice trembled at the sound of it,
and buried themselves deeper in the long grass. The air was sweet, and
still smelled faintly of the day. But when the breeze came up, the
forest breathed out the smell of pine and fallen logs and moss. It
was very still....

Except beneath the 1961 Model 1020 John Deere tractor, where Ping is He
had finally lost his temper with France and her sharp little tongue.
Lost it big time.

Now. You can do one of two things to fully appreciate what happened
under there next. Either, trust that the theater of your mind's eye is
a rich environment, and simply try to imagine the following fight scene
between an enraged weasel, and an equally enraged hedgehog. Or, give
yourself a little help and click this link for the intended Techno
sound track, the "Battle Theme" from the Matrix movie soundtrack. The
choice is yours. I like to give my reading public a full range of
options.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI9jYriaKXk

OK. Techno on.

WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP WHOMP! WAKA_WAKA_WAKA_WHOMP-DOO-DOO-DOO WHOMP!
WHOMP WHOMP! (Sirens.)

Beneath the belly of the tractor, time is now moving very slowly,
moving at Hollywood movie fight scene slow. Ping flies through the air,
whip-cord lean and dark, all fighting machine bearing a surprising
resemblance to the weasely-looking actor Keanau Reeves from the Matrix
movie series, and lands on top of France, who has her back to him. They
tumble, roll, clawed paws emerge from the rolling tumbleweed and swipe
arcs of slashing claws through the night.

WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP! WAKA_WAKA_WAKA_WAKA-DOO-DOO-DOO WHOMP!
WHOMP! WHOMP! (Sirens.)

Now, because this is a Hollywood movie fight scene, they are no longer
fighting upon a dirt surface, but shiny, wet, black asphalt. (Have you
ever noticed that in all Hollywood movies the streets are wet, as if
it had just rained? Same thing here.) Little blurs of light shine on
the tips of the slashing claws, the pale ivory teeth, the sharp little
hedgehog quills. The opponents roll, come apart, come together again
and wrestle.They rise a foot above the surface of the asphalt and spin
in impossible slow motion, locked together.

(Sirens.) (Sirens.) (Sirens.) WHOMP/WHOMP/WHOMP!!! WAKA_WAKA_WAKA!

They separate, and France, in slow motion runs up the inside of one
of the tractor's rear wheels, again in Hollywood defiance of gravity,
rappels off of the underside of the tractor and makes an *upsidedown*
leap that brings her falling toward Ping, all four of her little legs
outflung like mountain climbing pitons. Ping, impossibly, rotates
on his long axis a foot above the surface of the shiny wet asphalt
pavement so that he spins in the air to catch her, and they come
together once more into a tangled clinch, and once more they turn
together in the air, slowly.

WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP! WAKA_WAKA_WAKA_WAKA-DOO-DOO-DOO WHOMP!
WHOMP! WHOMP! (Sirens.)

Puma finally enters the scene in a slow motion charge from the left
hand side of our view. She (sloooowly) reaches the fighters and sets
them to spinning much *faster* about one axial dimension with a single,
simple flip of her paws.(Akido lessons!) They tumble in the air until
their centrifugal force finally flings them apart from one another.
Ping, his startled profile now resembling that of a starfish with all
four legs and one tail outflung slowly spins from view, mouth opened in
a silent shriek that cannot be heard over the Techno. France scrunches
herself up defensively into a ball, as hedgehogs do, and bounces off
of the wet asphalt, bounces off of the inside of the back tire she
(impossibly) ran up before, and comes to rest on the ground, rocking,
on her cushioning spines.

Blessedly, the ear-splitting Techno music stops, and once again the
ground is simple New England dirt with a little bit of tough crabgrass
and the occasional pebble and oil spot that has leaked from the
tractor. Time returns to normal speed. Puma is still balled up like a
little hate-potato, hissing on her side. Ping is weakly trying to pull
himself from a clump of especially robust dandelions, and Puma simply
stands there on her back feet, front paws fisted on hips....silent.

A minute passes. Two. The crickets are just plain emotionally
deep-fried from the Techno, afraid to make a sound. The owls are now in
the neighboring town of Gardner, and still flapping east with speed.
Finally Puma says "Well. Can you hear me *now*?"

More tomorrow
Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 5700]