BOING

BOING

BOING BOING BOING

That's the sound of... Well, actually I have no idea what that sound is. Let's bide our time and watch and wait and listen and perhaps we'll ascertain the source of the sound.

BOING

BOING

BOING BOING BOING

Time passes eventually, and eventually we see a gray blur Boinging above the underbrush, but barely beneath the overbrush. He rides astride a spring-loaded contraption at once strange and familiar.

BOING

Describing a series of inverted parabolic paths, the wombat bounces, his impressive tummy rebounding flubbily at the base of each boing. He seems to be operating a pogo stick, but one of an ilk never quite witnessed by the jungle citizens ever before.

It seems to be outfitted with a group of solid fuel rocket boosters, all wired to a nine-volt battery duck taped to its main post.

The wombat mutters to himself, bounding and bouncing and heaving wildly across the jungle floor in unsteady bumps. He chuckles to himself in the now familiar fashion, bizarre ripples of fuzz rippling across his bizarre exterior. He briefly lets go of the pogo stick's handle with one front foot and consults his notes.

"Fourteen point three more boings until ground zero", he chortles as he makes his unsteady way towards an "X" painted carefully in a clearing about fourteen boings away. "All I have to do is arm the system just before impact, and I'll be the world's first wombonaut".

"Ground zero?"... "Impact?"... "Arm the system?" worriedly wonders the jungle as a whole as the space-bound scientist starts to solder selected silver-coated servos in series, proceeds to patch particular platinum plated paths in parallel.

He places a space helmet on his head and commences countdown. The animals nearby who fear for their fur flee full tilt from the impromptu launch pad.

"Five," bellows the bouncing one.

"Four," he chortles as the fuzz of his fur fans out in all directions at once.

"Three," he threatens theatrically.

"Two," bays the ballistic one.

"One."

All hearts stop. Every breath is held.

"ZEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOO!"

That's the sound of nothing very special happening. That's the sound of a Window of Opportunity being slammed shut in a pair of fuzzy front feet.

"Point Three?" interrogatives the intrepid one as all the boosters fire in unison on a pogo stick exactly far enough from it's launch pad to make controlled space flight a complete impossibility.

Take a moment, at this point in the story, to blow up a balloon to almost it's breaking point, but purposefully neglect to tie the obligatory knot in the end. Now let that same balloon fly from your fingertips and try as you might to track it's course as it flies, both willy and nilly, from your hand.

Imagine a bottle rocket with no bottle, a ship without a rudder, flying through space faster than the human (or animal) eye can track.

Now replace in your mind, the balloon, the rocket, with a portly gray marsupial at the helm of a rocket powered pogo stick as out of control as out can be.

If he were only traveling slightly less than the speed of sound, we'd probably hear the words, "Hmmm... those decimal points are somewhat tricky."

The burrowing animals burrow a little more deeply at this point. All others make the proverbial B-line for parts unknown.

The wombat, as he Sizes up his Situation, murmurs, "Well..."

"...this may sting a bit"

Next