Strange Tails

The rear of the human sat deep in the field, stuck in a bog. The great flood had subsided, its immense oceans spiraled away through a huge temporary space funnel, like a gigantic upturned toilet bowl. Sticky mud remained, as the human male repeatedly discovered. His female partner pointed, laughed, helped, and got stuck too.

Birds swooped and dived.

Squirrel looked on.

“What do you see?” came a voice from below.

“Not much.”

“Worth a look?”

“Nah.”

Squirrel trembled in rhythm with the thin branch beneath him. For the past few weeks they’d sought a Walmart, an Aldi, even an IGA, but found nothing. Nothing but a huge boggy field where Ohio used to be. They’d resorted to feeding themselves. Squirrel ate a nut. For maybe the second time in his brief but eventful life, he pooped.

“What are they up to?” said a third voice. It was Norman. Norman refused to acknowledge Squirrel and Potbelly were a double act.

“Not having sex. The Gods won’t be pleased.”

“I wonder if they ever are,” replied Norman. “Omnipotence? Overrated if you ask me.”

“Squirrel wouldn’t know,” said Potbelly. “He hasn’t even got as far as unipotence.”

“At least I can climb trees, fleabag. What are you bringing to the party, apart from a singular inability to carry brandy?”

“I found a rhubarb.”

“I rest my case.”

“So,” said Norman, slithering quietly past Potbelly. She wished he wouldn’t do that but it seemed to be the sort of thing snakes liked to do. “I wonder if there’s any news on us breeding with a non-sentient.”

“I’m not going to the meetings anymore. All this rutting with dumb animals. I think the goats are in it for more than scientific exploration.”

“They’re willing to try, I’ll give them that,” said Norman. “All these brown bipeds want to do is eat fruit and admire Earth’s resplendent beauty. Weirdos.”

“I’m just happy we’re home. Been picking diamonds out my toenails for weeks. At least on Earth the sunshine is real.”

“And the real rain, the real wind, the real mosquitoes,” complained Squirrel. “To think I gave up an inexhaustible supply of candy trees for this. And how long will it be before these stupid humans invent partially-hydrogenated fats?”

“Couple thousand years?”

“I’m prepared to wait.”

“It’ll be never if they don’t start shagging soon.”

“Don’t they know what they’re supposed to do? It’s like they’re a clean slate, but with no one to draw on it.”

“I got a pencil,” said Norman, waggling his tail.

“Remember what the Gods said,” admonished Potbelly. “Leave them alone. What’s more, those assholes are probably watching.”

“Yep,” said Squirrel. “Let’s get rolling. First one to find a candy bar gets a big sloppy kiss.”

“That’s supposed to be an incentive?”

“I haven’t told you what you get if you don’t find one.”

Squirrel hooked his small claws beneath Potbelly’s fraying pink collar, which despite everything she had been through still clung doggedly around her neck. He settled in as she trotted off, her gait even more ungainly than before, if that were possible, thanks to her still-healing ribs.

Squirrel gently ran a finger down the scar, just visible through her fur. Still it ran some ten inches long, in a perfectly straight line, just like a river doesn’t. He patted her affectionately on the side of the neck.

“Coming?” he called back to Norman, who had slithered to the top of the same apple tree Squirrel had just climbed. At first Norman remained silent, studying the humans intently.

“No, you go ahead,” he hissed back. “I have an idea.”