If I'm so Nasty, What's Your Foot Doing Under the Tire of My Car?

The next day dawned bright and sunny. The sky was laced with a steely hue flashed brightly with a blue, steely brightness known only to dawns flashing steely blue and, not to mention sunny. Did I mention it was sunny? How about steely blue?

The word spread like wildfire through Mooburg that I was going to attempt a second incredible dive into the Moo Gorge in a desperate effort to free myself from my cow body. By eight o'clock AM the parking lot next to the Giant Lint was filled with onlookers, picketers, and out-of-work bicycle mechanics.

Because the town was the Lint Capital of the World, Mooburg's forefathers had erected on this spot (the aforementioned Moo Gorge) a fifty-foot statue of a piece of lint. Not as sexy as Paul Bunyan or the Great Sudbury Nickel, but it brought the more boring and fastidious class of tourists to the town in the dog days of summer. No, the statue of the Giant Dog was in Gravity Falls, just fifty kilometers away.

I mentioned picketers. There were cows picketing the fact that I was dishonoring the State of Cowhood by wanting to get rid of my cow body. And there were aardvarks protesting the fact that I was an aardvark hiding in a traitorous cow body. And there were picketers protesting the fact that there were picketers in town.

Apparently, the Great Aardvark Dive had turned into an international event. There were representatives from Spain, France, Great Britain, Russia and a smattering of other countries, fresh from the embassies in Ottawa. They didn't have any stale representatives. If they had had them, they would have sent them, because this was what you call a minor international event. Something on a par with the Global Flea Circus, held recently at the Remember the Mange Pet Store and Tuxedo Rental on Cud Street.

In the crowd, I spied Madge Slaf-Kabnecier, voluptuous as ever in a daisy-smothered frock. Our eyes locked and she lifted the daisies invitingly, exposing a little provocative calf. The provocative calf's name was Buster, well known for distributing seditious leaflets outside the local five-and-dime.

With a sigh, I wished that things had turned out differently for Madge and me. I remembered those moonlit nights at Nelson's Lookout, my 1976 Mustang Convertible, and Madge mooing at the moon. I really miss that Mustang. I remembered the senior prom at Aardvark High. I never forgave Madge for renting that cheesy tuxedo. I didn't think the flowery pink chiffon did anything for my legs, either.

But there was nothing I could do to turn back time. The crowd had gathered. The itinerant vendors were selling hot chocolate and Beaver Tails (don't ask) from hastily-constructed stalls at the lip of the Gorge. I had made my bed, and I was just going to have to lie in it. A loud boo reverberated across the Moo Hills, and I realized that the crowd wanted me to get out of bed and jump into the Gorge.

I closed my eyes and stepped into eternity. 

 

Ten seconds before impact, my life flashed before my eyes (a manual process, since I had forgotten to buy an automatic life flasher at the local drug store). My birth as a young aardvark under the name of Charles Butterfat on 11 January, 1910, at South Bandicoot. My many exploits in Hollywood, turning out 26 pictures for Warner Brothers and receiving some 10,000 fan letters a week as one of Hollywood’s top stars. My retirement in 1957 in Burbank with a pink poodle half my age...

With a sinking feeling (about 32 feet per second squared), I realized that someone else's life was flashing before my eyes. Dang! It was Rin-Tin-Tin's Life!