A brief but delightful reprieve from the tortuous Clown Chronicles
Once upon a time, there was… a FERRET!!!
“Heh-heh-heh…”
Now, back in the scarce and paltry days before The Ferret had created his self-sustaining system of backstabbing for the sake of his own advancement, his unformed character was still open to the profound shaping influences of experience. He was also capable of moral reflection.
“Dude!”
In fact, his mind was so advanced beyond his age that he could already foresee, through a highly developed faculty of reason and awesome mental processes of logic, what he was going to be, that is, turn into, and so, on the day he arrived at his deduction, decided right then and there to forego taking in life’s lessons so that he might reach his predestined state all the sooner without undue wastage of time. Ironically, by turning into what he knew he would turn into, he would lose the very qualities – the highly developed faculty of reason and awesome mental processes of logic – that had allowed him to make his deduction in the first place, of which consequence The Ferret was calmly accepting.
“Heh – I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
On that day, as spring was once again coming into the world, The Ferret decided to explore the biologically diverse environment behind the old ramshackle shed in the backyard of his lower middle-class parents’ home in southern New Jersey.
“I’m going to be a hockey player… and a doctor!”
Against one side of the shed, planks, sticks, and odd pieces of sawn-off construction wood were piled up pretty high. Lying across the top of the pile was a large, heavy, long beam of lumber, not unlike the beams The Ferret had seen buttressing the roof of the attic on those occasions he managed, despite his mother’s commands, to sneak up there to play amid stacks of broken-down and useless junk his father had been too tightfisted and anal retentive to throw away.
As The Ferret marveled at the giant beam, which reminded him of a miniature stage, his quickly shifting, flitting eyes suddenly caught sight of the head of a large nail sticking out of the shed wall, just above the beam. He approached the nail and wondered at it:
“Heh – what’s that doing there?”
For there seemed to be no purpose to the nail, except it was there, banged into the shed wall – and only so far and no further – as if purely for its own sake, but serving no other purpose.
Excitedly, The Ferret turned the corner of the shed and went inside, where he located the nail’s sharp end sticking through the wall. There, on the inside of the shed, The Ferret realized the nail was also simply there. He understood that, generally speaking, nails had a purpose, but no matter how much and how hard and how long he racked his brains, he could find no reason for this particular nail in this particular state.
So, stretching up on his tiptoes, The Ferret grabbed a spool of twine off a shelf and a pair of hedge clippers and scurried back out of the shed and returned back to the head of the nail.
“This nail doesn’t have a purpose, so I’m going to give it one – heh…”
The Ferret then unwound a length of the sturdy, thin twine and cut it with the clippers. He then tied one end of the twine around the base of the nail head and stretched the remainder across the large beam of lumber that was on top the high pile of construction wood just under the nail.
Then he hid behind a copse, where there was a low secret wooden bench to sit on, and waited to see what would happen.
“Heh-heh-heh…”
It was the beginning of springtime, and the birds were busy building their nests.
First, The Ferret saw one bird land on the beam and tug at the twine with its beak before abandoning it and flying away, and then another bird did the exact same thing.
However, a third bird, for whatever reason, decided to pit its stubbornness against the piece of twine and steep itself in a struggle to pull it from the nail, apparently imagining how it would fly off with it triumphantly into the trees.
But being neither sufficiently strong nor lucky, the little bird soon had one of its wings entangled in the string, and understanding its dire predicament and danger, began flailing around on the beam in a futile attempt to break itself free without damaging its wing while crying out for help.
At this The Ferret emerged from behind the copse and approached the struggling little bird, and the little bird said:
“Please, help me get free and… and…”
“And what?” replied The Ferret, immediately suspecting what he concluded was a sly look in the bird’s eyes, even though the bird was at an incalculable disadvantage, and the bird, seeing The Ferret catch that look, looked down at his claws, unable to finish his sentence.
“I’ll tell you what,” continued The Ferret. “After freeing you, I would have expected to hold you in my hands, for a minute or two, no more, gently petting your feathers and in my own clumsy but well-meaning little boy’s way checking to see if everything was all right with your wing before letting you go, imagining in my mind how forever grateful to me you’d be, perhaps even building your nest in a place where I might be able to peek in from time to time, sharing your joy as your babies hatch from their eggs. However, I know that as soon as I unravel the twine from your wing and attempt to cup you in my hands, you’d peck at them viciously, forcing me to let you go, and fly up into the trees, from where you’d unleash a loud and proud barrage of mocking chirps and tweets back down at me.”
The little bird remained silent, its head lowered in shame, confirming the undeniable truth of what The Ferret had just said.
“So, I’m not gonna help you at all – heh…”
With that, The Ferret turned his back on the little bird and hid once more, crouching behind the copse.
Other birds swooped down to assess the situation and swept back up sounding notes of panic, warning, and alarm.
By and by, a cat The Ferret was familiar with but couldn’t quite say was his, came slinking against the shed and, spotting the struggling little bird, hopped up on the beam next to it. The fluttering, struggling little bird’s tiny beak was opened wide, emitting heart-rending cries, as its eyes met the cat’s eyes in terror.
The cat slapped its paw down against the bird, shutting it up, and then, gently piercing its body with its teeth, tugged at it deftly and tore it from the twine, leaving part of its wing dangling in the string.
It then brought the bird to The Ferret, laying it down at his feet behind the copse and meowing up to him for approval and praise. However, The Ferret took advantage of the cat’s trust and kicked it viciously in its side, sending it some yards distant, where it lay in an agony of excruciating pain.
“Heh-heh-heh…”
The Ferret spent many hours watching the cat, which was making funny gurgling and wheezing sounds in its long and cruel death throes. From time to time it would try to pull itself forward in an apparent attempt to find a more private, and less humiliating, place to die. In this the cat partly succeeded, as it finally died, with one place to fulfill that purpose being as good at that point as any other.
Filed April 11, 2015