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For some time I had been aware of the fact that although
I had four happy pets and a busy household, the accounts of their adventures were
rather dated. It wasn’t that people weren’t interested, but it seemed to me that
it lacked style and modernity. It was then that I turned to directing a cartoon
series based on my pets. The reviews from my household were rather… shall we say…
interesting. Let me tell you what happened.
It was a Saturday morning when I ushered
everyone down into our little home theater in the basement. (It only seats nine
people, but that’s more than enough.) Everyone shuffled down to the front row
of seats and sat staring expectantly at the silvery screen. Actually, that screen
is a magical force field guarding the underground entrance to MonoKeras’ new
lab, but that’s another story. For now, let me give you the transcript of what
took place:
MonoKeras: Well come on, show us this great new idea.
Heilley: Yeah, I’ve got a date with a card table.
Me: Just hold your horses. Ah, lights off, and… action!
The credits began to roll for the new film. They were:
BABY PETS THEATRE, YEAR SIX
MonoKeras (gold Uni)-- Maunie
Kallisari (Halloween Peophin)-- Kall
blchocobo (desert Blumaroo)-- Bullchoy
Heilley (skunk Kyrii)-- Heil
blchocobo: Bullchoy? That’s got to be the worst possible name you
could’ve come up with.
Heilley: How about Bullchokey?
blchocobo: I sit corrected.
Heilley: At least they won’t expect you to walk around with your
hand up, swearing allegiance to Sloth. Heil, indeed.
MonoKeras: Or that you’ve got some sort of infectious disease. Maunie?
How stupid can you get?
Kallisari: Shhh, the credits are fading. Let’s find out.
It was a beautiful day in the woods, and the
clearing was the perfect place for a picnic. All of the family was there, each
absorbed in their own task. Maunie and Kall were practically butting heads as
they dug into the picnic basket…
Kallisari: Aw, isn’t that sweet?
MonoKeras: No! Look at us! You’ve got those big bug-eyed baby eyes,
and me? I look almost exactly like that stupid Uni makeover! Talk about
baby pets.
Bullchoy was spreading the tablecloth out on
the ground, while Heil was absorbed in her solitaire game of Cheat.
"Three sevens," she announced
as she laid down cards from one stack onto the middle pile. Putting her hand
on another, she hollered, "Cheat!" Sure enough, it turned out that
she had cheated.
Heilley: That has got to be the stupidest, most ignorant thing I
ever saw.
blchocobo: Oh pipe down. At least you didn’t have your loincloth
turned into a diaper.
Heilley: So what? Acting dumb is worse than looking dumb.
Kallisari: Shhhh!
"Oh look!" Kall chirped. "Tchea
fruit! My favorite!" She unscrewed the jelly jar and helped herself to
a big glob of yellow and blue tchea jelly. "Ummm… delicious!"
"Hey! Don’t I get any?" Maunie
protested.
"Only if you do what I say,"
Kall proclaimed.
"No fair! I put that in for both of us!"
"So what? I got it first!"
MonoKeras: Did not, did too, did not, did too… where’s the sandbox
at?
Kallisari: Out of camera shot, maybe? Anyway, I can hear it fine
without seeing it.
Bullchoy put his paws over his ears as the argument
grew louder. After a minute, he decided to take action. Maunie and Kall were nose
to nose, glaring at each other. It was child’s play to grab the jar from Kall’s
hoof and make off with it.
blchocobo: Child’s play? Please tell me I didn’t hear that term.
Heilley: Too late, you did.
Bullchoy’s chortling was drowned out by the
cries of outrage as Maunie and Kall both raced after him, intent on retrieving
their treat. The chase was cut short near the edge of the clearing by a tree root.
One trip, and Bullchoy was flat on his belly while the jar did a quick flip through
the air before landing on the ground and rolling onto its side.
"My jelly!" Kall wailed as the
contents oozed out onto the grass.
"Hey, it’s not all gone," Maunie protested as he flipped the jar
back upright. "It’s thick stuff, see? Still some in there… honest, Kall…"
MonoKeras: If he says don’t cry, I’m gonna gag.
"..Please don’t cry!"
Kallisari: Here’s the barf bag, honey.
Kall’s sniffles were cut short by a loud clacking
noise. Three pairs of eyes fastened themselves onto the huge bug that had reared
up out of the grass.
"Yuck!" Kall shivered.
"I think it likes tchea jelly, too,"
Bullchoy observed. "Look at those pinchers."
"Eeek!"
Maunie grabbed Kall around the neck, and she
quieted immediately.
blchocobo: You must be strangling her, MonoKeras.
MonoKeras: Very funny. And how would you know?
blchocobo: When she turns blue?
Heilley: No good, she already is.
Kallisari: Shhhhh!!
Dead silence fell on the group, broken only by
a voice in the background.
"Two nines… I win!" The announcement
was followed by a mix of cheers and groans as Heil gave the reactions of all
of her card players.
blchocobo: Interesting sound effects there, Heilley.
Heilley: Like that’s supposed to make me feel better?
blchocobo: Look at it this way. Heil might be an idiot, but at least
she’s a talented idiot.
Heilley: You’re such a comfort. Not!
There was a blur of gold and Maunie sprawled
across the ground, hooves only inches from the bug. "Arrgh! I missed him!"
The bug scuttled away as Maunie picked himself up. "C’mon! After it!"
The new chase quickly absorbed the three and
they bounced, trotted, and slid all around the edge of the clearing, trying
to catch the big ugly bug that had been helping himself to their jelly. Heil,
in the meantime, had begun another solitaire game- this one being solitaire.
"Lesseee… red six on black seven but that
means I leave the other black seven there so that’s no good…" A paw reached
out to the nearby picnic sheet and snagged a bowl of treats. "Hummm…"
MonoKeras: Does it not count when you eat stuff if you don’t realize
you’re doing it?
Heilley: Yeah right. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
"Hold up," Bullchoy panted, He put
his arms out and held Maunie and Kall back from continuing the race. "He’s
just running away from us."
MonoKeras: What was your first clue, genius? He was going to race
towards you, right?
"Of course he is," Maunie replied.
"So we have to run faster!"
"No we don’t. Look, all I have to do is
shoo him back your way and we can trap him."
"Shoo?" Kall looked confused. "But
you don’t wear shoes."
blchocobo: The mental age of the target audience just dropped by
three years.
"He means chase him back towards us,"
Maunie told her. "But how are you going to do that, Bullchoy?"
"With this," Bullchoy replied, fiddling
at his waist. "Ouch!" He sucked on a paw.
Heilley: So much for safety pins, eh?
Bullchoy recovered quickly. "Here we go!."
He whipped his diaper out to one side. "See? You chase him towards me and
I’ll snap it in front of him so he heads back towards you. Then we have him!"
"Oh neat!" Kall immediately darted
around Bullchoy on one side while Maunie circled around the other.
MonoKeras: Second down and ten to go, they try the old pincer play-
hike!
Kallisari: Shush, dear, this is getting exciting.
MonoKeras: How about stupid?
Heilley: No good, it’s already there- no getting…
Kallisari: SHHHH!
The target of their attentions perked up and
began scrambling again as the two pets closed in on it. Maunie and Kall shouted
commands back and forth as Bullchoy circled in the background. In a surprisingly
short time, they had the bug turned around and heading towards him.
Bullchoy snapped his diaper in front of the bug.
"Back!" he barked.
Heilley: Do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred Neopoints.
The law of unintended consequences suddenly struck.
Instead of turning back towards its pursuers, the bug mad a hard right turn
and headed for the center of the clearing at top speed. Maunie and Kall turned
to follow it while Bullchoy’s mouth dropped open.
Heilley: Looks like you didn’t get a chance to give it a ticket
for speeding.
blchocobo: Oh my, what a tragedy.
"Oh, goody, Black King goes into the open
space," Heil mumbled. The bug raced past her and onto the picnic sheet.
It scrambled up and into a bowl, disappearing from sight. Whether it was attempting
to hide or to grab something to eat was a question that was never to be answered.
Immediately after it dropped into the bowl, a chubby black and white paw followed
it in…
Total silence fell, except for the sounds of
crunching as Heil chewed her latest morsel.
"Um… what are you eating, Heil?" Maunie
asked in a small voice.
"Wha? Oh. A grakle bug, but it’s kinda crunchy."
Heil licked her lips thoughtfully. "And they dipped it into tchea jelly
instead of the usual sauce. Weird."
"Heil," Bullchoy sighed, "that
was a wild bug. It was eating our jelly and then you ate it."
"I WHAT?" Heil’s eyes bugged out. "I
ate a wild BUG?"
blchocobo: Hey Heilley, you look really bugged about that.
MonoKeras: Yeah, no doubt because it was a wild bug instead of a
tame bug.
Kallisari: Oh don’t bug her about it, guys, can’t you see it was
an honest mistake?
Heilley: Shut up, the lot of you.
Heil began coughing spasmodically as Maunie thumped
her on the back. Bits of bug spattered the ground in front of her.
"Don’t worry," he remarked cheerfully.
"You just had a nice appet.. appa… opening dish for the picnic."
"Icky poo!"
Everyone else laughed. Kall held out her now
mostly empty jar. "Want some more tchea jelly with it?"
"Bleah!"
MonoKeras: Warning. The Neopia Master Surgeon has determined that
eating bugs causes you to engage in onomatopoeias.
Heilley: Quit showing off. You wouldn’t know what one of those was
if it bit you.
MonoKeras: You don’t know what one is and you ate it.
Heilley: I did not, that’s just a stupid cartoon!
Kallisari: Hush, both of you, before I get out the sandbox.
"Come on, let’s eat some good
stuff," Heil begged.
"I’m for that!"
"It’ll take just a second to lay out, everyone."
"Well hurry, I’m hungry! All that chasing…"
It wasn’t long before everyone was devouring
the delicious food spread out for them.
Kallisari: Too bad they don’t have better table manners.
MonoKeras: Babies. Just be glad he didn’t put bibs on us.
blchocobo: Judging by the results, maybe he should have- look at
that strawberry jelly on Maunie’s chin.
Heilley: Oh quit bragging. Just because your neckerchief got turned
into a bib…
The eating finally slowed. Maunie burped and
leaned back, sighing contentedly. "Delicious!"
Heil burst into wild giggles. "You ate a
bug, you ate a bug!"
"Did not!"
"Oh yes you did! I put the remains of the
one I ate in your bacon omelette!"
Bullchoy snickered. "She got ya, Maunie."
"And I got you too! What did you think those
dark specks were in that sutek muffin- raisins?"
"Ugh. Let’s get her!"
Heil was still laughing even as she ran away,
with both of the boys pursuing her. Kall grinned to herself as she watched the
chase and licked the last of her tchea jelly out of its jar.
BABY PETS THEATRE, YEAR SIX
A production of
Scriptfox Imagination Productions
Copyright MMIII
Kallisari: Well there goes the closing credits. Looks like my character
was the only one that didn’t eat a bug.
Heilley: No, you just ate after it-- remember, it ate on the tchea
jelly?
Kallisari: Horrors, of course not! It only ate from the jelly that
was spilled on the ground. Kall ate just the jelly that was left in the
jar.
Heilley: Oh yeah? Want to go back and see for yourself?
I chose this moment to intervene. "Forget
it, people. You all got your preview, now I’m sending it to the theater for
the public to come watch."
"Ack!" MonoKeras choked. "You’re
serious? You’re really going to show this out in public??"
"Of course. Why did you think I made it?"
"NEVER!" They all chorused.
I could see which way the wind was blowing. I
grabbed the cartoon reel and we engaged in another chase scene, with me being
the laughing maniac in the lead. Needless to say, I won. Check your local theater
listings for exact time and location.
The End
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