A Lofty Undertaking
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One
of the major problems one encounters when living deep in the rainforest is, quite naturally, all that rain. Newcomers to the jungle learn early that the constant precipitation can cause one's fuzz to become permanently waterlogged and is generally a pain in the fuzzy butt.
Nobody in the jungle ever wonders, "I wonder if it's going to rain today". It rains every day. Weathermen are more rare than wombats in the jungle.
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Rain, rain and more rain makes the orchids grow beautiful and wild. Rain feeds the languid jungle pools and the slow moving jungle streams. Rain makes the rainforest what it is. But rain can also soak a wombat to his pudgy bones in a very short time, and a wombat who wishes to take up residence in the dark forest must find shelter.
And so the weather weary wombat sets out to find a home for himself.
"Home is where the hammock is," he hums happily to himself as he carefully selects a pair of trees from which to suspend his hammock. He wanders carefully around the base of each tree, looking high up in the air until a suitable situation is sighted.
The jungle rookie produces a long wooden extension ladder from his pouch and props it against the first of his arboreal candidates. He ties one end of his pendular home to the tree and then moves to the other, securing his hammock securely.
A wombat climbing into a hammock, especially one so highly situated, is a marvel of paunch, pudge and peril. The jungle veterans watch with a certain amount of anxiety as the wombat wiggles, wallows and wrestles his way into the sling, finally achieving comfort and a certain amount of safety just as the clouds burst open.
"Ah yes, the rain", says the moist marsupial as he wrings out his sodden fuzz. "I should hang a canopy above my hammock so as to remain dry in a downpour."
Standing on the tippy toes of his back feet, he uses his front feet to tie a tent between twin trees above his hammock home. This tarpaulin, produced from his pocket, is decorated in red and white stripes and bears the slogan, "This way to the Egress".
Many jungle beasts wonder with trepidation just what manner of creature an Egress might be and whether or not Egresses are fierce.
The marsupial knows just exactly what manner of beast an Egress is specifically not, and suffers no trepidation at all. Instead he wobbles, wiggles, wriggles, wrinkles and wrestles his fuzzy self back into the calm embrace of the hammock, dons an appropriately relaxed sort of hat, and lies back, listening to the gentle rhythm of the rain on his roof.
The fingers of his front feet laced behind his head, he closes his eyes and, just before falling soundly asleep, he whispers, "The jungle is an interesting place indeed. I believe I shall have big fun here."