The Adventures of Frou-Frou the Badger and his Funny (Sometimes Furry) Friends

[walto]

It was a bright spring day, the kind that's perfect for a picnic, and there was a knock at Frou-Frou's front door. Wonderful! It was the Major, and he was carrying just what Frou-Frou was hoping he'd be carrying--a tea tray!

"Good morning, little sir," said the major, "I'll bet you'd like a bit of cake this fine morning. Andre and Marta are hungry, and you know they wouldn't think of starting without you."

The cakes and muffins did look delicious, and Frou-Frou, being an almost always hungry badger, roused himself, tossing his bedclothes on the floor, and ambled out his front door, wondering if old Sheldrake would show up and ruin things again like he did last time.

Frou-Frou left Zsitsi snoring quietly as he locked up, but the loud CLOPCK! of the latch awakened her. "Maird!" she muttered. "He, too...

[Hot Ptah]

like many men, cannot move about a house without creating the most dreadful racket!"
On the surface of the muffins and cakes, Clyde the Cockroach was skittering, having the most delicious little meal from some of the fruits which had nearly spoiled before being partially cooked into the muffins and cakes. "I say, oh chap, these are the most perfectly decaying little fruits! You must try some!" called out Clyde to Ferdinand the Fruitfly, who was flitting about nearby. "There's better stuff than that on the kitchen counters," said Ferdy, and with that Clyde joined him in the journey to the kitchen. They first agreed on a betting pool as to the human or badger who would first put their mouth on a spot where Clyde had been.
The Major was nursing a powerful hangover from the absinthe which he had imbibed in tremendous quantities the night before. He saw Clyde jump off the tray, but wanted to attribute it to the partially hallucinatory qualities of the absinthe.
"I say, was that or was that not a perfectly disgusting little bug on the muffins and cakes. Best to toss them out to the hogs," said the Major. "I do hope that Frou-Frou won't be too terribly disappointed! Oh well, perhaps I will take him to the polo match at the club this afternoon."
Just then a startling sound, like a small explosion, was heard nearby. It was....

[Deke Thornton]

Miss Priscilla Cummingwood's noisy motor car, coming up the unpaved road.

"Oh, goody!" Frou exclaimed. "Perhaps she will have some of those black bean pastries and...

[Lenny D.Guitarist]

"Joe Walsh's Rocky Mountain Way Oysters".

(My heart ain't in this thread, my friends. Anything named Frou-Frou or Cummingwood has "suck" written all over it. I'm cashing in my meager chips. See you in a future thread.)

[walto]

But no, there were no mountain oysters in Priscilla Cummingwood's car. What there was, was a young woman, bleeding from the nose and a driver who had just broken that nose.
"I warned you, bitch," the man growled.

Ferdinand was confused. He flew over to Clyde, and described the scene. Clyde knew several blighters, living in digs as he did. The scar on the left cheek was familiar to him.

"I believe I know that blighter, Ferdy. He's called...

[Mike Schwartz]

Bucky Badger, the long standing mascot for the University Of Wisconsin. Just the sound of the name Frou-Frou just sends his midwestern attitude...

[walto]

southward, as they say."

"What's a collegiate Yank doing hanging about Sheffield?"

"Picks up a bit of mining work during the off-season, judging by the soot," Clyde answered.

"Well, beaver coats are bad enough, but violence of this sort is absolutely unacceptable."

"I quite agree," the thoughtful roach said, shaking an antler in disgust, "I rather think we ought to...

[Deke Thornton]

stay out of Farmer Cofferdom's peach orchard -- especially the far side, near the old green shed.. Nobody I've known to go in there has ever come back."

Clyde listened for a response, but Ferdy had reached the end of his fleeting existence. Grieve not, dear reader, for a number of Ferdy's progeny were...

[walto]

seemingly everywhere that warm Spring. Flitting about and drinking the abundant nectar with perfect contentment, as if no further evil were about to be performed upon an innocent and promising young woman in the front seat of her own Citroen sedan.

Frou-Frou, too, was oblivious to any impending dangers as he munched on his cake in Marta Pompadour's lap listening to Andre's banter:

[Deke Thornton]

"Ze high-brow types say zat Pompidouf's 'Particles of Motion' is a masterful work, but I sink true perfection can be acheived only in nature -- or here." He indicated the cherry preserves that filled his croissant and adorned his chin. "You, my friend," he said, addressing a dark-haired, thin-mouthed man he'd never seen before, "What, in your experience, can equal ze artistry of a sunrise over the Tuscan Hills?"

"I'm afraid I've never been there," the man said in an accent Andre could not place, "but from what I've read it's quite the place."

"Ah, as Miss Emily Dickinson said, 'Zere is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.' "

"Quite so," said the man, whom Andre disccerned had little talent for small talk. With increasing concentration the stranger was looking in the direction of the Citroen, where...

[Hot Ptah]

Orville the Opossum was timing his leap to jump into the front seat. A terrified scream was heard, and much angry-sounding hissing. "That's ol' Orville's hiss, for sure," thought Frou-Frou.
The next thing that happened in the Citroen was...

[walto]

Disneyesque: thousands of fruitflies buzzed the driver as if they were the wrong sort of bee and the man behind the wheel with two broken knuckles were Pooh, disguised (badly) as a rain cloud. The driver covered his face to protect his eyes from the onslaught and the car lurched off the road into a tree. Even before the broken glass had all stopped falling, Priscilla kicked the passenger door open and bolted in the direction of the picnic. "Fetch some bandages," the Major instructed Andre, while I pour...

[john williams]

...the Absinthe, as its about time for a little something or other, what? Never too early for a drop of the Green Fairy, eh?"

Just then...

[Deke Thornton]

the thin-mouthed stranger walked up to Bucky Badger, who was fumbling to his feet. "Perhaps you'd like some assistance," the man said. He pulled up the giant badger, then with startling abruptness tore off his head. The badger head was, unsurprisingly (as those who witnessed it reflected with the benefit of hindsight), part of a costume. The man in the Bucky Badger getup initiated hostile resistance, but his opponent turned "Bucky's" force against him and rammed his unprotected head into the same tree that had impeded the Citroen's rollaway. "What does the 'W' on your sweater stand for," the stranger said, "Wanker?"

The man went up to Orville the Opossum and scratched him behind one ear. "You're a bloody hero," he said to the marsupial. "I'm sure that garrolous Frenchy will be happy to reward you with a croissant."

"Ah," replied Andre, who found himself in the unfamiliar spot of being utterly toung-tied. "Why, I...

[Hot Ptah]

always thought that Bucky Badger was a real mythical creature, a living thing like Frosty the Snowman, like magic!"
Orville the Opossum bellowed, in a deep, resonant, chuckly voice, "and a very pleasant sort of magic, if I do say so myself!"
The Major threw back his fourth glass of absinthe in the past three minutes and burst into a hearty song, "Down to the village, with a broomstick in his hand!"
He would have continued his exuberant vocal except that he was struck dumb by a sight that confounded him even years later when he recalled it, namely...

[walto]

The complete undressing of the cheese-head assailant by the thin-lipped stranger. "Now wait a bit, there, sir. I think we've seen about enough of that faux badger."

But the strange work continued unabated, in spite of the gasps and sniggers, right down to athletic shoes and supporter.

"Mon dieu!" giggled Marta. "Vive la derriere!"

"Even I won't drink to that," replied the Major. "Not only has our lovely countryside been sullied, but look...it seems we've awoken Sheldrake. Damn...." He was right: the crabby patriarch was indeed hobbling down the path toward them.

"He looks like a Degas without his costume," quipped Andre, who was still wondering exactly who knew this thin-lipped fellow and when the devil Priscilla's nose would stop bleeding already. This whole picnic had been the farthest thing imaginable from the idyllic tryst he'd hoped for. With Sheldrake -- his black moods and incessant rants -- closing in fast, prospects with Marta would likely deteriorate further. "Oh, Frou," he mused, "Would that my hand could replace your....

[Hot Ptah]

powerful paw with its deceptively sharp, destructive claws!"
Frou-Frou thought back to the time when Orville the Opossum had invited him to row down the river in a small boat, with a picnic basket filled with every sort of delicious thing that a badger and opossum could desire. That was a good day, unlike this picnic. To make matters worse, suddenly a white toadstool, over ten feet tall, with unblinking eyes on tall stalks, and powerful tentacles over twenty five five feet long, came swaying toward them. "Hey, it's the leader of the Terrible Ones from 'The Angry Planet'", said Frou-Frou. Everyone felt the icy malevolence of the evil leader, and heard in their brain his telepathic communication: "Thousands of us are massing to destroy you. No one will be spared! Hah, hah, hah." That last mean-spirited chuckle was the most chilling sound of all.
The leader of the Terrible Ones turned to the stripped down Bucky Badger and beamed a telepathic communication, which they all heard, or rather felt in their brains, "You will be the first to be destroyed." The Terrible One picked up the scantily clad Badger in his tentacles, wrapped them around and around his torso with a vise like grip, and snapped him in two. Milky liquid squirted all over the ground.
"I say," exclaimed the Major. "I don't think that this Badger fellow was human after all. He almost seems like a....a....plant of some sort, a milkweed perhaps."
The rest of the party saw thousands of the Terrible Ones massing on a hill near the picnic. Telepathic thoughts of pure evil came bombarding into the brains of our company. Suddenly the picnic seemed not nearly as important. "Run, run!" screamed Orville the Opossum. He knew that it was useless to oppose the Terrible Ones. The Major grabbed two bottles of absinthe and joined the others in their hysterical flight. He could not run as fast as he once could, due to his old war wound. Just as he had almost made it to the motorcars, a tentacle slithered out toward his gimpy leg. The Major....

[walto]

hollered, "Take Sheldrake instead! I beg you! He's got all the money, and no one would care--in fact, we'd all be glad--if that old bastard were to...."

[Hot Ptah]

be snapped in two like a brittle old toothpick!" The leader of the Terrible Ones beamed a thought into all of their brains, "we will destroy him, and each of you, too! We do not want only one of you to be destroyed! We want to destroy all of you and your cities, too!"
The Major raised his pistol to the Terrible One who was trying to grab his gimpy leg. "Don't waste your time! Run, or hop, or stagger, whatever!" screamed Frou-Frou. "In 'The Angry Planet' gunshots did not work against the Terrible Ones! Only slicing off huge chunks of their body mass with long swords worked!"
"A ha! A long sword! Just the thing I need!" shouted the Major. However, there was only one problem. He actually held up a canoe paddle. The absinthe had addled his senses. He swung the paddle to and fro in a hacking motion at the Terrible One, who snatched the paddle and snapped it in two like so much kindling.
'I say old man, that does not seem sporting! Rules of war and all that!" said the Major. Just then one of the motorcars sped up to the Major, and Orville the Opossum grabbed the Major with a powerful claw and yanked him into the back seat. "My absinthe! my absinthe! It fell out of my pockets!" shouted the Major. The motorcar was already a quarter of a mile away, with hundreds of the Terrible Ones following in hot pursuit. A few of them stopped to place their tentacles on the spilled absinthe. A remarkable thing happened. Upon contact with the absinthe, the Terrible Ones began to dissolve, with an acrid white smoke and a small pellet of disgusting matter all that was left of them. "This is a previously unknown scientific phenomenon!" said Andre. "If the human race is to survive, not to mention the badgers and opossums, we will have to divert all absinthe production away from drinking and make it into weapons of intoxicating destruction!" "Away from drinking! Surely you jest," coughed the Major.
The Terrible Ones retreated into their deep caverns in the sides of the hills--for now. "We must get to a government office and tell them about the attack, and the weapon!" shouted Frou-Frou. But it would not be so easy, as around the next bend in the road was....

[walto]

Dorothy the Muskrat and her entire extended family! Why there must have been two dozen muskrats, big and small, directly in their path.

"Flatten 'em," yelled the Major to his rescuing oppossum, but of course Frou-Frou would never allow harm of that sort to come to any of his friends. He bit the old drunk hard on his wrinkled left wrist, drawing blood, and jumped onto the brake pedal before Orville could act on Pitcairn's demand. As the car screeched to a halt, the wary oppossum turned his head and saw that Sheldrake had reached Priscilla Cummingwood and was slapping her face in an attempt to rouse her, or as he said "buck her up." She slumped down onto...

[Hot Ptah]

a large pile of newspapers and got newsprint all over the side of one face, and on one arm. This mottled appearance was not becoming!
Dorothy the Muskrat and her family began to dance in a furious manner, spinning about in a blur. "I say, they are regular whirling dervishes," croaked the Major. Without his absinthe he was beginning to feel rather poorly. Still, the temptation to join them was overwhelming. The Major bolted from the motorcar and got down in the middle of the muskrats and spun around as fast as he could. Oh no, he felt dizzy. He slipped down, right into a large number of white grubs. It was Gus the Grub and his organized crime Gang of Grubs. The Major had never been found of having large white grubs in close proximity to his face, but Gus the Grub and his Gang were the worst of all. They were known as bloodthirsty killers. "Get him, boys," bellowed Gus. "I say, I don't wish to be...." The Major slumped down under the furious assault of the Grub Gang. Only Orville the Opossum's quick action saved the Major, as Orville...

[wesbound]

performed a lap dance on Cummingwood and the Major. This appalling lapse of judgement was so traumatic that Cummingwood suffered a massive heart attack and died. No one grieved because she was such an insufferable douchebag.

[Hot Ptah]

Dorothy the Muskrat and her family talked about the Terrible Ones coming out of their caverns. "We are thinking of signing a neutrality pact with the Terrible Ones," Dorothy said. "Otherwise they will destroy us, and everything else on the planet."
"Don't do that! We know how to stop them," began Frou-Frou, but he found a big claw-dominated paw slapped over his face. Orville the Opossum hissed, "don't tell them about the absinthe, you fool! It sounds like they are on their side!"
"You are either with us or you are against us!" said the Major. "Now then, I enjoyed the whirling dervish dance. Do you muskrats want to join me in one of those Russian dances where you crouch way down and then kick out one leg with great force from time to time?"
Dorothy said, "we would love to." Soon all of the muskrats and the Major were crouching and kicking up a storm. Just then Ernesto the Eagle flew into the assemblage and astonished them all with this startling proclamation. Several of the party remarked years later that when they heard this proclamation, they felt years older in one second.....

[Deke Thornton]

"Ernesto strongly suggests a moratorium on that irredeemably sordid lap dancing for the next 14 pages."

As he considered Ernesto's words, the resourceful Frou-Frou once again proved his mettle as his learned paw massaged Cummingwood's heart and revived her.

As the treatment neared its happy conclusion a Terrible One slithered toward Frou's back! However, one look at the caked blood in, on and around Priscilla Cummingwood's victimized nose caused a horrible sound, such as that a rabbit makes when its life is threatened or violently ending, to emanate from the creature's toadstoolish "head."

"By Grant's boils!" Sheldrake cried. "The things are murderous beyond words, but they turn coward at the sight of blood."

"Well now, Yank," the Major said,

[Hot Ptah]

there's an idea for you! Now we can go back to drinking the absinthe again!"
The Terrible Ones had another surprise for our little band of friends. Ernesto brought the news, which he had observed from high in the sky, that they....

[walto]

might well be hearing of an armistice soon. "Ah, we've heard all that sort of happy talk before," growled Sheldrake, who'd lost considerable money during the current conflict, whose cause remained unitelligible to him. "What makes you think it's true this time, bird?"

Ernesto, who never spoke to humans, ignored the query. But Frou-Frou answered for him. "He says, sir, that an osprey with a Prussian accent told him of a general retreat."

"Just more bird talk, isn't it, badger? Have you ever known one to be dependable...or to purchase a motorcar?"

"...or to wear a gas mask in a mustard attack?" giggled Andre. "Think how silly a wren might look in such a contraption!"

And all the human beings laughed and laughed at the poor eagle's expense. And it couldn't be denied that the thought of a little wren in a big gas mask may indeed be quite humorous. But an angry Ernesto is not. He....

[Hot Ptah]

suddenly flew right into Sheldrake's face, leaving deep gashes across his cheeks, and then flew up high into the air, all within a second or two.
"He says, don't make fun of birds," whispered Frou-Frou. "My cheeks! my cheeks!" screamed Sheldrake. "Yes, it looks like a spot of bad luck, old chap," said the Major, comfortable again with the absinthe flowing into him in copious quantities. He tried to join in with the muskrats' latest dance, an interpretative piece first performed by Judith Jamison to "Grandpa's Spells" by Jelly Roll Morton. With the absinthe level in his bloomstream at near fatal levels, the Major clumsily fell over with the first semi-acrobatic move, and landed in a pile of weasel droppings. He hugged his bottle of absinthe closer to him, and did not care.
The muskrats were alerted to the fact that their arch rivals, the weasels, must be nearby, as they surveyed the weasel droppings scattered about the scene by the Major's pratfall.
Frou-Frou was happy to see another badger approaching, a comely female with the delightful name of....

[Deke Thornton]

Frou-Frou!

"Ah," rhapsodized the male Frou-Frou, "What delightful confusion my friends -- and I as well -- shall henceforth know!"

The female Frou-Frou, for her part,

[walto]

asked after her friend, Zsitsi, who she knew to be her twin brother's concubine.

"She's quite well," answered Frou-Frou. "Too lazy to rise and join us for cakes this morning, but otherwise plump and happy--as usual."

"You know, of course, that she's with child?"

"Mais non! Is it true?"

"Fool." And Frou-Frou walked toward her brother's house, to see after her friend.

[Hot Ptah]

Zsitsi was listening to John Zorn's "Naked City" album. One of her quirks, among many, was an unreasonable pride in her name, and in particular, the first letter of her name. She liked to be called "Z" or "Big Z", and only listened to musical artists with a first or last name beginning with Z. She only read books with a word beginning with Z in the title, or by an author with a first or last name beginning with Z. She only ate foods which began with the letter Z. Zinnias were a major part of her diet. She liked the petals and leaves O.K., and just loved zinnia stems.
"Big Z! Big Z!" called out Frou-Frou.
Before Zsitsi could answer, something appeared in the house which would change the course of their lives forever. It was....