by Isaiah Paul

Created on: September 16, 2008   Last Updated: January 03, 2009

A Year With the Bipeds

A year ago today I was snatched by wicked hands and incarcerated in thisthishovel. It happened while I feasted on blessings from the gods at the temple of the Golden Arches. Oh, how I fondly remember those golden-brown, delectable staves scattered all over the blackened ground of the temple square! Oh! how we feasted when the gods choose to bestow their favor! Oh! how we screeched our gratefulness to Leotabby and Felinico, the providential ones, once our stomachs were surfeited with oleic goodness! But, alas, those days are no more, perhaps forevermore, for I languish here, a prisoner of the bipeds.

The day my ordeal began, I was curled up in our communal den, enjoying my favorite pastime: napping. It was a spring afternoon; the clean smell of life hung in the air, the birds were singing, and a gentle breeze washed over my coat. Life was most pleasant.

It was a long time in coming, I might add. The winter was brutal. Our den flooded during the fall rains and then froze solid as granite during winter. We had to sleep in a pile for warmth. Can you imagine trying to sleep while fifty other hairy bodies are crushing you from all sides?

And don't get me started on those jolly-joker flatulent types. Without fail, as soon as enough warmth was generated by the mass of bodies to allow for sleep, the Jolly-Joker Ragtime Farting Band would begin playing a tune. The resulting noxious fumes offended the senses and curled my whiskers on several occasions. For the life of me, I can not understand how the misery of others can produce cacophonous hilarity in the jolly-jokers. Indeed, I would have assassinated the whole lot, but my strength failed me.

I did receive a measure of recompense, though, on a bitterly cold night in February, when Fats Dynamite, the leader of the jolly-jokers, left the den to relieve his engorged bladder. He never returned. We found him the next day frozen solid as a brick, in full squat. Fats' horn had, thankfully, been forever plugged.

The other jolly-jokers mourned the passing of their leader. Indeed, they blubbered and carried on like drunken sailors for what seemed an eternity. In his honor, they swore they would never play again, and for three nights the rest of us enjoyed malodorous-free peace. On the fourth night, however, the band struck up again and with renewed vigor. Loathsome creatures!

Forgive me. Where was I? Oh yeahnappingbirds singinggentle breezelife was pleasantOkay. I was lying there somewhere between

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