Strange Tails

Snodberry stretched his muscular neck, rolled his head to the back, to the side, and to the front, releasing the tension from his body, and feeling it rise into the evening sun. The tension vaporized without a sound, like a small, quiet fart. His eyes opened. He watched his cares drift away on a sunbeam.

The cliff was tall, taller than the antennae atop the Silence, taller than any tree he’d ever seen. Far below, an ocean kissed the rocky feet of the cliff. Standing close to the edge and looking straight down, the lapping water seemed to kiss his own feet too. He was at one with nature. He was so full of peace, he was at several with it too.

Suddenly the air howled with surprise, stunned as it was by the unfolding of his leathery, fibrous wings. He gazed at them, right and left, admiring their chutzpah, rivaling the majesty of the horizon. In one leap he was airborne, gliding through the ozone, heady with positive ions, down fast to the water and then up to the mirroring sky. No creature, no human, no thought had ever been this free.

He roared at the world and it vibrated in middle C.

He cried his poem:

I am the King!

The revolutionary!

The all-astounding,

Snod-a-berry!

See him fly!

It’s extraordinary!

The death-defying,

Snod-a-berry!

His Queen is here!

He …

A distant, muffled voice yelled at him. “Wake up! Wake up!” it hollered. “We’re going down! We’re going down!”

Snodberry raised an eyelid, then a second, then blinked his eyes into focus. He saw Potbelly, her head down and retching, with Squirrel, his stubby forearms extended, trying to hold back her ears. Snodberry bubbled up a little vomit too, reaching with a hairy forearm to cuff it away. Sometimes it helped to be absorbent.

Sounds became louder. The room listed like it was at sea. He bumped from shoulder to shoulder, a bright orange pendulum in a box. He was in a box now? At least the shrink wrap had gone.

“Vanguard squadron pull back! Agnes! Gingersnap! Get the hostages out of here. Red formation! Red formation!”

Snodberry felt something scurry up his left arm.

“Come with me,” ordered the hamster, arriving at a sharp halt with a salute. Atop the hamster’s head sat perched a jauntily cocked beret, and its golden fur blended in with Snodberry’s. The effect was something like a pudgy, militarily-inclined cyst.

Snodberry shrugged. The hamster tugged one small lock of fur to steer him. It nodded towards the portal through which they had previously entered, presumably now an exit. The laser beam no longer shone, and in its place flashed a rapidly moving emerald carpet that looked unsettlingly like a conveyor belt of passing treetops. The motion made him queasy.

“Repeat, red formation, red formation,” came a second, transistorized voice. “Roger, red formation,” replied Snodberry’s mini pilot, to a small device attached to its shoulder.

“All creatures listen up!” shouted the hamster. It took the opportunity for a quick spit and groom. “This will be a smooth extraction. Follow my command. You will gather around the hole in the floor. When I say jump, I will expect you to jump.”

Several other hamsters gathered next to Potbelly and Squirrel. Snodberry couldn’t see the moth they’d been talking to earlier. He couldn’t see Siobhan either.

“You! Big fella! You’re going first. ETA 10 seconds. Are you ready?”

Snodberry shrugged.

“Repeat, I need verbal confirmation. Are you ready?”

“He doesn’t talk,” shouted Squirrel. “I think I heard him cough once but I couldn’t be sure.”

Something disc-shaped appeared beneath them. Snodberry’s full senses were returning and he felt a strong wind ruffle his hairy arms. He could tell now the disc-shape below was another craft, though much smaller. It messed up the turbulence and blotted out the tree carpet, which had steadily become less carpety and more tree-y.

The hamster spoke again. “Sir, if you are ready to jump, cough.”

Snodberry remained coughless.

“Or shrug,” said Squirrel.

Snodberry raised two, right-angular shoulders.

“Jump! Jump!”

Snodberry wasn’t so keen on the launching requirements of jump and decided instead on a small step. His shoulder companion, the commander, leapt back onto the deck as Snodberry’s not entirely convinced face disappeared through the floor. The commander peered over the portal edge, waiting for the disc below to recover from its traumatic, Snodberry-induced experience.

“You next!” the commander yelled to Potbelly, who retched by way of reply.

“I don’t think I can do this,” she said. “I faint going downstairs.”

“We’ll do it together,” replied Squirrel.

“One at a time!” ordered the hamster.

“Together or not at all,” snapped Squirrel, his tone of voice attached to a very large rock, secured to a very heavy anchor, welded to a ship, along which, in large capital letters, were the words “OR NOT AT ALL.”

“But I demand a clean extraction,” insisted the commander.

“Sure, your teeth or your balls?”

“We’re running out of time. Just go! Go!”

Squirrel latched onto Potbelly’s collar. From the corner of her eye she could see him wink.

“We’ll be fine,” he whispered.

“That’s easy for you to say, you’re dumb as a rock.”

Squirrel relaxed his grip. “OK, you got it. Let’s stay on the ship. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go down in flames, making mad passionate love in the afterburners, crying oh lord, oh lord, take me now, as we finally climax together in a tidal w—”

Potbelly jumped.

Like all depth perceptions, this one totally lied. The large disc seemed to be miles away but was only a few feet down. They landed, dumph, on Snodberry’s midriff. It was surprisingly soft, as Snodberry was only too aware.

The disc proved to be a scalloped bowl containing low hard seats the same color as the hull. A bop, bop, bop followed as the hamsters dropping in gracefully, each holding a tiny torch between two front paws, letting out a small jet to soften their landing.

One of the hamsters was attached to a silver cord that was in turn attached to something in the space craft. That something was a human. As the cord strained against its distant anchor, the human looked down, puzzled, hopping from one leg to the other.

“Why isn’t it jumping?” yelled Potbelly, the air whooshing past.

“I guess I didn’t specify it jump forward,” replied the hamster, barely audible above the noise. The hamster gestured furiously for the human to follow.

In the end, while seemingly understanding the request, the human did not exactly jump forward but fitfully threw out a right leg and the rest of it just sort of followed. It tumbled through the air, a leaden, limby dandelion puff, striking the side of the smaller craft before disappearing off below.

The hamster attached to the other end of the cord followed, having as little control over the proceedings as the human, or at least, as little control over the proceedings as those parts of the human that weren’t its right leg. The group on the disc watched them disappear into the tree canopy. A small parachute shot out the back of the hamster.

“Oh dear!” yelled Potbelly.

“They’ll be fine,” observed another hamster. “Parachute.”

“You do understand the basics of physics, right?” yelled Squirrel. “A pocket square attached to a small rodent may not cut it.”

The hamster paused again, for another spit and groom. This was obviously a thing. “Trust me,” it yelled eventually.

“Now why would I do that?”

The hamster chose not to reply. Above them loomed the great silver undercarriage of the spaceship, the only sound now an angry roar of wind as both crafts split the air uncomfortably in two. The smaller disc swerved then moved parallel to the main bulk, bobbing close and moving away, like a remora fish nibbling at a whale. Finally the craft pulled up to a semi-translucent screen near the tapering front.

“Blue Fox. Blue Fox. Suggest we try the alternate entry. Over.” The commander nodded at a response from the radio on its shoulder, looking grave, the reason why lost on everyone else in the din.

“Plan B!” he shouted to his comrades. Each saluted. Snodberry, Potbelly, and Squirrel did not salute, clinging as they were, for dear life, to the smooth edge of the craft. With a rather stubborn display of passive aggression it offered little in return in the way of purchase.

“Plan B?” yelled Squirrel. “What went wrong with Plan A? Weren’t we Plan A? Isn’t it now home for milk and cookies?”

“Laser portal was Plan A. Then we found you. Locked down, lost the element of surprise. Be quiet. Yakking not part of Plan B.”

The smaller craft accelerated to the very front of the spaceship. Squirrel looked over the side and noticed the crest of a hilltop passing by. Scorch marks and dirt craters spoke of battles past. Wherever they were, spaceships had clearly come this way before.

The disc shook from a sudden boom before oscillating back to level, much as it had when acquainted with the falling Snodberry. This time, though, the force shot out from the disc rather than at it, while one of the hamsters held onto some form of recoiling laser cannon. Boom! and Boom! again went the cannon, wielded with joyous abandon by a small, tawny fluffball. It fired repeatedly at the same blackened spot until Boom! a fissure opened up about the size and shape of a serrated coffin.

The disc pulled up to the jagged gap and a hamster flung itself out trying to grip its edge, only to be tossed aside by the pressing wind and sent tumbling along its shearing stream.

Potbelly, to her relief, saw another pocket square unfold into a parachute.

A second hamster readied itself. It looked to the commander, to the fissure, and then back to the commander.

“If God wanted you to live forever,” yelled the commander, “He would not have made you a hamster. Now jump!”

The nervous subordinate readied itself, twitching from one foot to the other, waiting for the perfect moment that would never come. It leapt.

A yard from the disc, and maybe a foot from the hull of the spaceship, the hamster nestled with a muffled thud into the large banana-shaped mitt of Snodberry. Somewhat dazed, but visibly grateful, the hamster found himself perched back on the craft by the great orange edifice.

The commander, whiskers quivering with rage, spat words so fast his brain could barely keep up. Snodberry ignored him, instead boomeranging the same mitt back out of the disc and into the fissure. Wincing as he gripped its rough edge he pulled the disc to it and over, flipping the craft onto its side. The tempestuous wind did the rest, pushing the silver shell onto the spaceship hull, capping the fissure like a plug.

The remaining hamsters needed no formal invite and were quickly inside, sooner even than Potbelly registered everything had gone dark. She saw their little rumps waddle off into the gloom. Without immediately knowing why, she rolled in after them.

“What are you doing?” yelled Squirrel.

“Stinkeye. He’s still in there. He saved us. It’s our turn.” Her brain rationalized a decision already made by her squat little legs. “Siobhan’s in there too, remember?”

Snodberry nodded in agreement.

“But she’s dead!” pleaded Squirrel.

“I know,” said Potbelly, then disappeared.

“But why—“

Squirrel turned to Snodberry, watching the blood well around his fingertips. Snodberry wore his usual sad face like a tramp wears an old coat, drooping from his bones, resigned to its fate. Squirrel knew he couldn’t hold on much longer.

“Oh well,” he said. “Cometh the hour, cometh the Squirrel.”

He leapt in.