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Mysterious Goings On BOOM
BOOM BOOM BOOM
That's the sound of jungle drums in the distance, compelling and mysterious. The dark forest echoes with their sound and every creature responds with curious and anxious movements, scurrying on their ways, murmuring quietly and nervously to themselves.
"It's coming. So soon. I'm not ready. I have to prepare," says the armadillo to himself as he scuttles quickly away into the underbrush.
"When will it be? Do you think it will come tonight?" asks the Macaw of the creatures milling nervously past. They are all too busy or preoccupied to answer her, so she flies away nervously.
bub, unaccustomed to the mysterious ways of the jungle, hears the drums and descends from his hammock, stumping across the jungle floor, wondering and listening.
"What does it mean?" wonders wombat. "Are these percussive portents of important events to come?" Watching the wary movements of the other jungle denizens, he decides that something Big is indeed imminent.
A group of penguins, dressed rather formally, march single file towards the sound of the drums and out of sight.
They don't say much.
The tiger skulks past, glowering dangerously. His movements are slow and graceful, but they reveal the terrible power of this magnificent predator as his muscles ripple beneath his gorgeous fur. He pauses near a tree at the edge of the clearing and unsheathes his mighty claws like so many switchblades and swipes his paw against the trunk of the tree. Now his movements are lightning fast and his amazing power is evident.
As suddenly as this show of strength begins, it ends and the tiger walks off, his tail gliding inches above the ground behind him.
All jungle creatures who characterize themselves as potential tiger food breathe a sigh of relief.
"What does it all mean?" wonders the wombat aloud. The raccoon hurries past, carrying a strange suitcase and fails to answer. The moose looks briefly at the wombat, but falls silent. Only the caribou takes the time to answer, but in his own inimitable and inaudible fashion.
He waves his antlers in the direction of the newly tiger-pawed tree.
Wombat waddles warily in the direction of said tree. He's not altogether sure he Wants to Know.
As he approaches, the pouched portly one realizes that the tiger has carved a message in the bark of the tree. As the sound and the rhythm of the drums increases and the urgency of the jungle denizens rises, bub balances bifocals on his semi-elongated snoot and reads the words.
"Prepare. There's gonna be a party tonight."
As one can ascertain from any zoology book, wombats have a natural affinity for headwear, and the fuzzy one's excitement level reaches a new all time high as he fumbles in his pocket for a moment and then produces what he considers to be the greatest party hat of all time.
Even casual observation reveals that this truly is a magnificent hat. It works. It contains colors appearing nowhere in nature, other than on a wombat's head. It has colors from no rainbow known to wombatkind.
It has points and curves and curls and triangles and tesseracts and tetrahedrons and lights and smoke and mirrors and mirrored balls and bumps and bows and bells and whistles. It has a chinstrap to keep it fastened firmly to fuzzy heads. It has features found on no other hat in the entire world, and it is NOT available in stores.
It is a fine hat.
Creatures big and small, bright and beautiful, boring, bold and brazen, file past the wombat as he places the Hat of Epic Proportions on his fuzzy head. He follows the stream of excited animals towards the sound of the drums.
Deep deep deep in the jungle, in the darkest recesses of the forest there's a very secret place. It is a place more beautiful than any other on earth. No wombat has ever seen this spot of amazing beauty. The wombat is used to being amazed. The rain forest is a place of stark natural beauty, but THIS place wrote the book on stark natural beauty.
The sun shines through the trees and casts a gentle light on the creatures already gathered. The sky is visible here, and beautiful. Soft white clouds meander across the blue sky and butterflies and lightning bugs flit past.
Nearby, a waterfall throws giant flumes of spray into the sky and millions of gallons of water into the pool beneath it.
In the center of this beautiful glade, the monkey, the vole, the ocelot, the giraffe and the salamander beat the urgent rhythm of the jungle drums. They sit in a circle, they pound out complex rhythms with a backbeat underneath. The rhythm of the jungle is shifts constantly. As the giraffe leaves the circle to take a drink from the clear blue pool, the chipmunk bounds onto the vacated drum and uses all four hands to beat out a rhythm.
The raccoon breathes a sultry melody into a saxophone, his case open next to him with a dollar thirty-two in change cooling its heels inside. He looks over the top of his dark glasses at the drum circle as the crickets and cicadas sing a sweet string descant above his snaky song.
The snake wriggles in time with the music and the dancing begins.
This is no stately affair. This is no soirée of the staid. This party puts the "wild" in "wild animals". The dance of the wild ones is a primitive affair. The rhythm is infectious and nobody, not even a wombat, is immune.
Another peek at the zoology text reveals that wombats have exactly four left feet. They rarely dance.
But a wombat with a party hat this magnificent is no ordinary wombat at all. Despite the paucity of right feet (to the tune of two), the pudgy partygoer begins to dance (to the tune of the raccoon with a rhythm section). He wiggles and waddles and waves and waltzes to the rhythm of the drummers. He moves and grooves, his demeanor improves as the raccoon with an ax spins a spidery song.
The spider articulates the sound of the song with finger cymbals attached to each articulated arm.
A wombat in full dance is a marvelous thing to behold. And a wombat in motion, sporting a Lid which Defies Explanation, can be described only as Something To See.
Most zoology texts tell you that Size Doesn't Mean Anything, but I've witnessed many animals dancing, and I'm here to tell you that a wombat with pudge can outdance any of the more lithe animals. Each time his impressive belly wiggles, his fuzzy butt sets up a sympathetic vibration that Causes One to Wonder.
He twirls, he bounces, he bounds to the sounds, his corpulent belly resounds when he bounds. He dances like no wombat has ever danced before.
He has Big Fun.
Suddenly a phalanx of Penguins in Tuxes pile from the jungle underbrush with large silver trays held high above their heads. The trays contain wax lips, cake, glasses of jungle juice and nuts and berries. There are trays of dirt for the worms to eat and trays of worms for the birds. There are trays of cupcakes and doughnuts and sundaes and things that nobody can really identify, but taste great anyway.
There are games and gizmos and things to play. There are wonderful creatures with kind things to say. And everybody, everywhere, has a really good time. Including bub.
Later that night, as the moon hangs high in the night sky, a weary wombat wanders home with a wistful smile on his fuzzy lips.
"Now THAT was a party", sez the marsupial.
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