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Tiling the Savannah
WEE-OO-WIKI WIKI WHEE HOO WHEE HA HAHT HAHT!
The grasslands quieted down again.
All except for a shrew. One of those ones that rocket across the grasslands, in and amongst the dusty little trails they carve out like little dusty roads through the grass.
It was traveling marginally faster than sound and hadn't quite caught the noise erupting from the trees at the edge of the grassland, just over a ridge of rock, due to zoning regulations.
When the noise did reach the shrew, it stopped running and vibrated in place for a bit.
The wind blew laconically at the grass, wishing it had some pots and pans in an open window to rattle, or maybe a giant flag, planted at the edge of the grasslands and just before the trees, where it could really give it a good shake and flapping. It would almost settle for a set of wind chimes, so long as none of the other wind was within earshot. A brisk *ta-tink* *ta-tink* wasn't the most satisfying of noises, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and it would have gladly ta-tinked that wind chimes right off whatever rustic porch it imagined it sitting on.
It looked around for the shrew, thinking it could blow the shrew around and maybe mess up some of it's pathways, but the shrew had taken off, quietly, because, though shrews appreciate an awkward silence following a calm-piercing screech, they're also very very small and not stupid. Therefore, they tend not to stick around. And besides, they enjoyed running the way certain people enjoy slogging out day in and day out, slapping on a pair of grey, formerly white tennis shoes, a pair of tracksuit bottoms that have seen better days, and some sort of sporty-like top (if this takes place in New England in the winter the sporty-like top usually is worn beneath layers and layers and layers of wool and whale blubber and other things that make you warm and about three hundred pounds heavier). Which is to say they didn't enjoy it at all. The running shrews (as this kind is known) were only doing it to train for... something. They weren't entirely sure what, but if people stopped them and asked them what they were doing while they were out, running around, they all, without fail, would have replied "Training." Not that they could, you see, because they were all quite out of breath from all the running, and could only manage to breath heavily all over people in the disgusting, wet sort of way runners tend to breath after a brisk trot, and so more and more people learned to stop stopping the running shrews, and just let them get on with what they were doing.
WHEE-OO!
The man struggling at the edge of the grasslands, just where the rock jutted out amongst the smaller transitional weeds was looking around for his orange plastic thing that he used to lay on tile cement and trying desperately to ignore the treefuls of monkeys throwing things (more often than not pieces of tiling equipment of his own that had gone missing during the course of the day) at him as he knelt down on the edge of the green grass of the savannah and slowly laid down some rather nice white bathroom tiles on a glop of tile cement he'd been forced to drip out of the bucket for want of an orange plastic thing to spread the cement evenly.
To be continued...
disclaimer:
For those of you anxiously watching the Macworld San Francisco keynote tomorrow, may Uncle Steve bring you all the presents for which you're wishing.
For those of you not, well, happy first week of the new year.
Thanks go to Carol for the animal noises, which apparently are based on real live television animals that live in the grasslands.
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