Third entertainment, number three

 

 Posted on DoodleOrDie many years ago.

I will tell you an incredible but true story about one of the most peculiar animals of the woods. He was a moose. "A moose", you might say. Surely you have seen stranger animals than a moose. How about an ostrich or a blobfish or a crab? Well. No. This was not just any moose. He had just returned north to his Scandinavian homelands after visiting his cousin in the south of Germany. His oldest cousin Mooselle and her husband Antlony were constantly verbally reliving their lack of highlights from what seemed a boring visit to the mountains of Denmark, although with much enthusiasm. He did not even understand their accent. But he also had a younger cousin, Hoovebert, an adventurous fellow who was visiting as well on his passing to France. "It's true, I saw one", he told our moose. "A phelant?". "An elephant". Hoovebert was talking with him the same morning they both would depart, though in separate ways. "You saw a phelepant?" he asked. "Elephant". "A what?". The moose is a patient animal. They were eating together and were both united in the struggle of catching hold of salad leaves laid flat on the ground. "An elephant". He had never heard of an elephant in his life. As the days went past on his way home, the curiosity went from overwhelming to all-encompassing. By the time he was home, he had truly become the most peculiar animal of the woods, and that is where our story first began. The moose thought he was an elephant. His mother had once warned him not to overthink the things he did not understand, but she forgot to tell him about the terrible memory span of elephants. In the belief that he was an elephant, he started doing all sorts of things elephants would do. He walked on his hind legs like an elephant, he made supersonic sinus wave sounds like an elephant, he slept upside down like an elephant and he always made sure to stride around with his front hooves behind his back. After a week he decided he should go out of the woods to further embrace his elephant nature. He walked proudly out of a clearing in the south end where the long river met the bridge that led to the strange place where creatures also walked on two legs, lived in great wooden square structures or sat inside of transparent square animals that always roared when they were traveling like snakes. They must be closely related to elephants, he thought. He decided to more thoroughly investigate one of these structures with what was likely to be elephant relatives inside them. He went around to the other side of a big stony and wooden box with a green garden full of grass that they perhaps were saving for the winter, and looked through a glass into a big flat space filled with strange stones and useless objects. Some chirping noises could be heard through a small opening in one of the transparent surfaces. "Well, why wouldn't she? They've been in the business long enough to recognize a scam". "Well, didn't you hear about her boyfriend? In May?". "The one who went to Berkley?". "What? Dave's brother? No Kate's boyfriend, Gerry, who had a tryout for that jazz school". "No, I didn't hear about that". "Yeah, because I hear he went through something similar as the Ruthbones. Basically the house band went into some ridiculous loop in the middle of the song, and didn't stop even after 30 minutes when he just left... or something, I don't know". "Yeah, well, seems similar then". "Yeah, it's kind of bizarre in the same way". "Yeah. Checked on the potatoes while I was calling them? Gone 20 minutes, I think". The moose stopped listening to these meaningless sounds and found a way to get inside through a tall gap. He went up a long series of steps until he found a place with a sleeping smaller version of the same elephant related species. It wasn't moving and the moose thought this a fine opportunity to study the behaviour of elephants. The boy rolled over once in a while and the moose watched him for 15 days and 16 nights while waiting for him to wake up. When the boy did wake up he didn't pay much attention to the moose and crept under his legs to get past and down the steps. The moose wondered if he finally had managed to adapt to his elephant nature. He went out and walked past a garden where four people were dancing to Swedish disco music, and they had all put their shoes on the hands. This was the truth of course, which the moose who believed he and most others were elephants, couldn't see. He now walked alone down a long road, where cars rarely passed by, and he believed he knew everything about himself. Soon, he thought, he would reach the place where his cousin Hoovebert had vacated. From a distance behind, two trucks could be heard. When the first one passed by, two tomatoes fell out from the load. One of them rolled across the road but the other was hit by the next truck behind. Then the first tomato said "Come on, ketchup".