The Adventures of Tim Laughingstock. The Bog of Sluggery. Eight.

Now there are bogs, and there are bogs. Most bogs are rather pleasant and peaceful places, though soggy. They are filled with tall grasses and waving cattails; frogs and turtles splash about in a carefree fashion; the muskrat industriously ferries baby ducks on its back when mother duck has a canasta party; and there are bright marsh flowers that scent the air with aldehyde and muguet. The circulating waters are clean and pure, having been filtered for centuries through peat moss and lignite. Tall and majestic cypress and willow poke through the clammy ground to give shade and shelter to many varieties of wild fowl -- such as the rufous button bird, the towheaded meeble, and the stilted motto. It is a welcoming region, where children can frolic barefoot in complete safety while gathering indigenous candyweed and honeyberries to bring home for the family larder.

But some bogs have a chip on their shoulders.

The Bog of Sluggery is one of these other types of bog, the kind of place you never want to be stranded in after dark -- and really don’t want to visit during the day, either. It is stagnant and fetid, with layer after layer of dead and decaying matter at the bottom of the water. And sometimes the dead things forget they are dead and rise up when the moon glowers down on them, to shamble about in hoary confusion. Instead of frogs and turtles, there are snakes and alligators. A gelid scum covers the muddy ground, discouraging the growth of anything but spiked hornwood and pouting toadstools. The dead trees shelter no birds -- only disgusting slabber bats. Strange pulsating lights drift about at night, smelling of wet ashes.

This is the terrible place Tim Laughingstock found himself involuntarily deposited as the guards and Constable slowly pulled away on their raft, leaving him stranded on a slippery hummock full of barking worms and daddy longlegs. He had with him only his two flasks of pickled lumdiddles and his bag of King's gold coins -- for although the guards and the Constable were implacable when Tim begged for mercy, they were also rigidly honest and never gave a thought to depriving the poor exile of his gold -- much good would it do him in the Bog of Sluggery, where he'd probably be dead by nightfall anyway.

Tim felt very sorry for himself. He had set out from Mountebank with such keen expectations, and now he was marooned in a dismal bog -- an outcast and a failure. He sniffed mightily to keep his tears of disappointment and fear from turning into an embarrassing cascade. His misery kept him from noticing a little man dressed all in black come strolling up behind him.

“Good day to you, delicious man!” said the little fellow in black.

Startled, Tim whipped around to face the little man -- wondering sullenly if this was the bog creature slated to do him in and leave his bones moldering on the ground. But Tim had been brought up to always return a polite greeting with one of his own -- even when stranded in a scummy bog.

“Um, good day to you . . . little man” he replied. “I hope this day finds you well.”

“Why, thank you!” replied the little man, smiling and revealing a set of enormous white teeth. “I believe today will be a good day, and tonight may even be better! What brings you out into the middle of our bog, might I inquire?”

TIm squatted down, the better to talk to this mannikin.

“I’m afraid I am a victim of unjust accusations, and have been sent here for the rest of my life as punishment.”

The little man dressed all in black wagged his head back and forth in concern, and clucked his tongue.

“I am sorry to hear of your misfortune. I hope I may offer you my condolences and my company while you are here.”

Tim’s spirits perked up at hearing this. Perhaps this strange little man could help him get out of this awful place!

“I am most obliged, stranger, for your offer of companionship. My name is Tim Laughingstock.”

“And my name” said the little man dressed all in black, “is Gullet the Ghoul.” He gave another gigantic grin.

Tim quickly stood up and backed away.

“You are Gullet the Ghoul, is that what you said?” Tim asked, beginning to feel queasy.

The little man in black stepped forward, still smiling his disconcerting smile.

“Yes, that is correct. And it will be my pleasure to accompany you during your exile, your brief exile, until you are killed by a flock of slabber bats or bitten by a poisonous slither worm or just starve to death. At which point, once you start to decompose, I will sit down and enjoy a delicious meal. My, but you look tender and fairly marbled with fat!”  The little man pulled out a silver fork, knife, and spoon, and began polishing them with the loose end of his black cravat.

“But, but . . . you’re not going to try to kill me?” Tim quavered.

Gullet the Ghoul looked very offended.

“Certainly not! I am not a violent creature. Not in the least! I perform a very important but very peaceable function here in the bog. When something, or someone, dies I take care of the remains.

“Oh” said Tim, despair growing on him like the onset of a sudden chill. “So you aren’t going to help me escape from this place? You really aren’t going to be my friend at all, are you?”

“I’m going to watch you die and then I’m going to eat you up” replied Gullet complacently.

Tim stood very still at hearing this, while his heart beat very fast. And then something wonderful blossomed inside of him. Something that happens to men and women when they have been beaten down and abused until they look up to find a Bright Spirit holding their hand. They experience an inner tempering that steels them to attempt great things. This is how heroes and heroines are made. Right then and there Tim started growing into the hero of this story.

He reached down to grab Gullet by his black cravat and pulled him up until he was face to face with a very grim Tim.

“So you think you’re going to wait around until I starve, eh?” said Tim menacingly. “Well, let me tell you, Master Gullet the Ghoul, that I am not going to starve as long as I have YOU to feast on!”  Tim grabbed Gullet’s silver utensils before letting go of his cravat. Gullet dropped to the ground, and stayed there -- looking up at Tim with dawning fear and respect.

“Now, now, Master Laughingstock. You wouldn’t really do me in just for a meal -- would you? I’m rather scrawny and, and . . . just think of the rotten things I’ve been feeding off of for years! I must taste very nasty by now . . . “

Tim kneeled down to address Gullet the Ghoul.

“Don’t worry, my little snack. I’ll have a roaring fire going to roast you until you’re crisp and sweet.” Tim unwound Gullet’s cravat and quickly tied him up with it. Then he scrounged around for sticks and twigs, heaping them up next to Gullet.

“You have some excellent wood around here for a bonfire” Tim told the ghoul cheerfully.

Ghouls are sneaky and putrid creatures, but they also have a strong feeling for survival and know when the jig is up.

“Master Laughingstock -- may I call you Tim?” began Gullet in the friendliest tones he could muster. “Tim, I’m thinking that you and I got off on the wrong foot today. Why, a big strong man like you must have very important business to conduct in the outside world. It would be wrong of me to detain you here in this backwater bog. After due consideration, I’ve decided that, um, I would be most happy to guide you out of here -- completely safe and sound and free of charge. What do you say to that, Tim?”

Heroes don’t hold grudges and are humble enough to accept help quickly when it is offered. Tim untied Gullet the Ghoul and offered him a hand up.

The Adventures of Tim Laughingstock. The Awful Ishgobs! Seven.

Unbeknownst to the inhabitants of Boogle Hollow, the owls in Tiger Woods were fed up with being plucked off their roosts and put into pies. So they did something about it. They went to see Pan the Piper, who was a minor forest deity charged with watching out for the interests of undomesticated animals.

Pan lived in a crosspatch surrounded by dill trees and fiddle fodder in the deepest part of the woods. He refused to do any weeding, considering such work beneath a minor forest deity, and so he was constantly afflicted with poison ivy rashes and nettle stings that made him grim and moody, not to say sadly melodramatic. He welcomed the owl’s complaints as an excuse to gnash his teeth and plot revenge -- plotting was his favorite hobby.

“Ho, birds of the night!” he began, gnashing his teeth for all he was worth. “Those varlets at Boogle Hollow have been murdering your families to slake their unholy appetites, have they? I’ll make them pay for their plundummering ways!”

The owls hooted softly with pleasure; this was the kind of sword rattling they enjoyed hearing.

“My minions will descend on them for revenge!” cried Pan the Piper. “Ho, minions -- show yourselves on the instant!”

Through the fiddle fodder and dill trees and the poison ivy trooped the minions of Pan the Piper. An ugly crew of warts they were, too. Pan looked at them with something close to affection while rubbing his prickly chin.

“Who shall I send to wreak havoc?” he wondered out loud. “My bozoronies with their horned elbows? Or my snatchapots with their flaming tails? Nay, I’ll give this job to my ishgobs -- they are ripe for rampaging!”

The ishgobs jumped up and down in snarky glee. "Frump! Bump!" they gurgled. They were truly awful specimens of the nogoodnik family. A combination of slug, serpent, and curlemom, ishgobs hated anything that could count or knew how to use soap.   

“Go, my ishgobs, and destroy all the ovens in Boogle Hollow! Pinch the women. Bite the men. Put crickets in the children’s hair! Ha-ha! They’ll never bake another owl pie again! Run! Go! Scamper! Beat it, lunkheads!” Pan the Piper capered in circles on his brown goat legs and blew a shrill, discordant blast on his pipes. Slavering in anticipation, the ishgobs departed -- loping through the forest with unholy speed while they savagely crooned their war song: "Hump! Dump! Trump!"

Back in Boogle Hollow the unsuspecting people went about their daily business. It was Dunking Day, so all the housewives took their washing down to the River Plush to dunk them and lay them out on the rocks to dry. The men went to work as usual, and the town square began filling with old men and spinsters and idlers who had nothing better to do. Tim walked confidently into the middle of the square to begin his sales pitch. Stepping up on the rim of the public fountain, which was carved out of exotic banana wood to look like a sultry sorceress pouring water from a small cauldron (and Tim had to pause a moment as he looked at the fountain statue, because it bore a strikingly lovely resemblance to Svarm), Tim cleared his throat and screamed . . .

Well, it was not actually Tim who screamed -- but a woman nearby who spotted the ishgob vanguard pouring through the streets. Before anyone could react, the ishgob horde was upon the town.

They smashed down doors with their mallet-sized fists and dragged out ovens, even ones with burning wood inside them, to pull apart like wrapping paper. They dragged the children out of school -- which the children thought was wonderful, until crickets began crawling through their hair!

Ishgobs bit every man in sight on their ankles, which was annoying but not painful. Ishgobs do not have teeth -- they suck up leaf mold for sustenance.

Judge Flugle, wearing a lampshade he had hastily picked up on the way out of his chambers, was roaring at the muddled mass of people and ishgobs in the streets.

“Men! To the Armory! To arms! To arms! We’ll beat back these lumdiddles and make library paste out of ‘em!”

Vigorously kicking his way through what he mistakenly thought were lumdiddles, the Judge led a troop of hardy heroes to the Armory for swords and pikes and spears and axes. Unfortunately when they got there they found that the Armory was barren. There had been such a lot of peace around for so long that the neighbors had gone in to borrow all the weapons to till and weed their gardens -- and had then conveniently forgotten to bring anything back. The place was as empty as an upside down birdhouse. The Judge and his cohorts were reduced to kicking ishgobs as if they were bouncy balls. This was actually pretty effective, since the custom at that time was to always wear hard, hobnailed boots everywhere but to bed. Ishgobs began flying through the air, howling and holding onto their scaly rear ends.

“Grump! Rump!” growled the ishgobs, as they continued their work of oven-cracking.

And where was Tim Laughingstock during all this ruckus?  He was way up high in a defenseless muffle tree, protecting it from ishgobs with his flasks of pickled lumdiddles and his bag of gold coins. Poised to sell his life dearly if any of those awful creatures climbed the twenty feet up to him, Tim had an elegant view of the decimation caused by the ishgobs. The air was thick with the smoke of shattered ovens. The remnants of owl pies -- the last that would ever be made -- were splattered against walls and windows. Children, having gotten the crickets out of their own hair, were throwing them at each other. The women, having been pinched black and blue, were now fighting back with iron bean pots -- bouncing them off the heads of ishgobs. They made a hollow 'bwong' sound every time they connected with an ishgob noggin.

“Slump! Chump!” screamed the ishgobs in angry surprise. These townies were a tougher crowd than they had expected. After the initial shock wore off, the stout citizens of Boogle Hollow got good and mad and went after the ishgobs with everything but the outhouse door. Tim watched in relief as Judge Flugle and the other Booglians slowly drove the ishgobs back towards the woods.  

When the fighting was over and the ishgobs were fleeing back into the woods Tim thought it would be safe to come down and resume his attempts to sell pickled lumdiddles. But he had only taken a few steps towards the town square when Judge Flugle, now wearing a towering and dusty shako he had found in the Armory, grabbed him by the collar.

“Aha!” cried the Judge. “Here’s the miscreant that started all this! Bringing his violent lumdiddles into our peaceful town for ruin and riot! Constable! Take your guards and escort this criminal to the Bog of Sluggery. Make sure he is placed in the deepest, dankest, boggiest part and leave him there to perish! Hutsut, get a move on!”

“But . . . but . . . your judgeship . . . “ Tim stammered in confusion, trying to tell the Judge that he didn’t know what those things were that invaded the town, but that they were definitely not lumdiddles and he had nothing to do with them. But the Constable, who had been on his second owl pie when the ishgobs arrived, was in no mood to humor the prisoner. He stuffed his bandana into Tim’s mouth and instructed the guards to hustle their bustles and get the prisoner on the road to the Bog in jig time.

And so Tim Laughingstock found himself on his way to a doleful and dampening end.

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Which is why he should have hired the services of Boodle Hollow’s premier legal firm, Pyk and Poke. At Pyk and Poke we think of every contingency and plan out enough strategies to stymie the most astute judge and jury. We can thimblerig the statutes and bumfuzzle the precedents so our clients walk out of the court chamber as free as bedbugs. We exceedingly regret that Mr. Laughingstock did not seek us out the minute he was thrown out of Judge Fugle’s chambers -- we would have wrapped him so tightly in a cocoon of technicalities that the King himself could not have touched him.

So remember, friends, if you find yourself on the wrong side of a pot of gravel, ask for Pyk and Poke of Boogle Hollow, with offices in Battle Bug, Frisky Dell, and Mimditch, and a self-service kiosk in Mountebank.

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In Thailand the Censors are Keen

Thailand's Internet Service Provider Association (Tispa), under pressure from the government to block access to Facebook, said the social media giant will not remove illicit content until it receives proper court warrants, local media reported.

From CNBC  

In Thailand the censors are keen

To keep Facebook all but unseen.

They find URL’s

That ring alarm bells

For lese majeste or rapine.

The Adventures of Tim Laughingstock. Six. Owl Pie.

The next morning came, as next mornings often do in these kinds of stories, full of sunshine and birdsong and the pleasant glub-glubing of soapy water on faces. Tim Laughingstock came down the stairs with an appetite that was strong and pure -- he had slept soundly and now felt he had earned a hearty breakfast.

“What do you recommend for breakfast, my good barkeep?” he asked cheerfully as he settled into a comfortable chair in the taproom.

“The owl pies has just come out of the oven this very moment, sir” replied the barkeep.

Tim’s eyes twinkled with anticipation, and his belly gave a purr like a tabby cat’s.

“An owl pie, by all means! With a glass of Plush Water to wash it down with.” The River Plush ran through the town of Boogle Hollow, and its waters were reputed to cure the Danks and thicken a man’s resolve in the face of meteor showers. It tasted slightly sweet and had just enough grit in it to wake up the taste buds.

And the owl pies!

Boogle Hollow is famous throughout the realm for its savory, flavory owl pies. On thick oak tables throughout the land, where dedicated gnawlings gathered in great dignity, an owl pie from Boogle Hollow is considered the highlight of any banquet. Even the King and Queen in their palace far away are partial to the village’s special pie. They have relays of knights and esquires bring it to them on horseback at least once each fortnight.

Part of the secret to the pie’s enormously deserved reputation is the fact that the owls are boiled in a pot of Plush Water prior to being plucked. Then there is the massaging of the owl meat prior to cooking -- each bird is pummeled by experienced pummelers on top of a cold slab of bacon. And that same slab of bacon goes in with the owl meat right into the pie, and then into the oven for exactly one and a half hours. There are a few more specifics to making an authentic Boogle Hollow owl pie -- but they are jealously guarded by the citizens as a civic secret. And let me warn you -- this story is going to be full of secrets!

Needles to say, Tim enjoyed his hot owl pie tremendously.

But how do the owls feel about being stuck into pies to be gobbled up willus-nillus?

A Leader Like President Trump

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans, increasingly unnerved by President Trump’s volatility and unpopularity, are starting to show signs of breaking away from him as they try to forge a more traditional Republican agenda and protect their political fortunes.

From the NYTimes

A leader like President Trump

Is easy to spurn and to dump.

It’s harder to say

“I’ll go all the way”

With such an oblivious chump!

The Adventures of Tim Laughingstock. Five. Before Judge Flugle.

The barkeep at the Boogle Hollow Inn was well-known and well-liked, so when he called for the Constable to take Tim into custody, it happened in the blink of an eye. Tim was hustled off to the court chambers of the Honorable Quentin Q. Flugle, an elderly judge who had let his hobby of collecting exotic headgear turn into a bizarre obsession. Judge Flugle wore a green fez with a gold tassel when the late night hearing began. A panel of twelve jurors was fetched from the Oddball Guild, the members of which stayed up all night throwing parchment airplanes out the second story window at passersby. They also liked to drop pokes filled with cobwebs on the heads of unsuspecting strollers -- and since cobwebs are so light, they always included a large rock in the sack before dropping it out the window. Their contention was that cobwebs never hurt anyone, no matter how many concussed bodies lay on the pavement in front of their Guild Hall. They enjoyed late night jury duty, since it gave them the chance to collect bundles of cobwebs from Flugle’s ancient and undusted chambers.  

Tim was brought before the Judge and the charges were read by the bailiff:  “Disorderly conduct unbecoming a patron of the taproom. Possession of lumdiddles without a license. Underage origami. Overage licorice beer drinking. Suspicion of sassafras. And the willful murder of one Mudge Mudgley, late of 23 Point Taken Street, in the township of Boogle Hollow, by the administering of lumdiddles.”

While the charges were being read Judge Flugle changed into a purple turban with a long ostrich feather sticking out of it. He glared at Tim while adjusting the turban to keep it from falling over his eyes.

“How do you plead?” he barked at Tim. “Guilty or really guilty?”

“But your judgeship I had nothing to do with that man’s predicament . . . “

At this point Mudgley’s widow began howling “Oh, how can I ever live without my beloved Mudgie! He was my sole support, and us with sixteen children and ten cats!” (She had seen the large bag of gold that Tim was clutching when he was brought in.)

Judge Flugle threw gravel around the room to restore decorum. Long ago he had used a gavel to restore order in his chambers, but he found that throwing gravel was more fun.

“Quiet, everyone!” he roared. Pulling off his turban, he quickly donned a yellow beret with a red pompom on top.

Meanwhile some of the jury began winding up cobwebs from the corners of the room, and others began surreptitiously shooting onlookers with dried roddenberries blown through hollow reeds.

“Ouch!” cried a woman who had come in the hopes of seeing the Judge put on a sun bonnet, “I think I just been bit by a lumdiddle!”

“What?” bellowed the Judge. “Have you brought those poisonous beasts into my chambers, you villain!” He threw an entire crock full of gravel at Tim, who had the presence of mind to duck just in time. The pot broke on the floor, scattering gravel everywhere.

“Your judgeship” Tim cried out, “they are all safely bottled up back at the Inn! I had no hand, none at all, in that poor man’s demise. Nobody forced him to eat that pickled lumdiddle. He did it for no reason at all, except he must be a fool.”

“My Mudgie a fool?” screamed his widow, as she beat off the bailiff to come up to face the Judge. “He was the wisest man since the willow trees started to weep! This village would not be the same if it hadn’t been for him . . “

“Yea” yelled a juror, his hair whitened with cobwebs. “There’d still be some Old Camel’s Breath for the rest of us to drink!”   

Since the Judge had no more gravel, having thrown his pot of it at Tim, he took off his beret to fling at the impudent juror. It missed him by a rod. He quickly put on a red and white striped beanie.

“Clear the chambers! Clear the chambers!” he screamed in a high and hoarse voice. “I won’t stand for any more hutsut like this! Bailiff, throw everyone out immediately!”

The bailiff and his assistants hustled everyone, including Tim, out onto the street, then banged the door shut in their faces. Resisting the urge to knock and demand sentencing, Tim made his way back to the Inn, where the barkeep welcomed him affably.

“I’ve just come for my things -- I’ll get out right away” Tim said warily.

“No hurry, sir. Nothing to worry your precious head about at all! Turns out that ten minutes after they took you away the dead man woke up and went back to home -- almost forgetting to pay his bill, until I reminded him with a tuning fork up his nose.”

“You mean, you mean the lumdiddle didn’t kill him?” Tim asked, incredulous.

“Not a bit of it, sir. In fact, he seemed rather healthier than before -- what with his cheeks as red as roses and the white in his hair disappeared and that sad limp of his gone. The fact of the matter is, good sir, I wanted to ask you for another one of them there bottled lumdiddles. See if it can help any of me other customers in a like manner.”

“Well . . . “ said Tim slowly, remembering how quickly the barkeep had wanted him put on trial just a few hours before. “I won’t give you another one -- but I’ll sell you one for a gold dinkum.”

“Fair enough” said the barkeep, rummaging through the pockets of his dirty white apron until he came up with a gold dinkum. “Here you are, sir. Just bring it down in the morning when you have breakfast -- I do trust you’re staying on?”

“Uh, for now. Yes. It’s been a confusing night, so if you don’t mind I’ll just bid you goodnight and go to my bed.”

And with that the barkeep handed Tim a candle and wished him cordial dreams.

The Adventures of Tim Laughingstock. Four. In Boogle Hollow.

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It has come to this author’s attention that past tense and present tense are getting all mixed up in the story of Tim Laughingstock, causing readers some confusion and fussiness. The author wishes to state that he is not being lackadaisical about the matter, but is under a magical compulsion stemming from the residual magic of Svarm. Even though she can no longer practice any type of enchantment, Svarm’s previous magic was so deep that there are still manifestations of it extant. One of these manifestations is the altering and negating of the time continuum when writing about her. This means that Tim and Svarm and other characters may be described as doing something in the past -- or they may be described as doing something right now in the present. And there’s nothing that you or I can do about it. So grab a bowl of nixie nuggets and continue your reading unperturbed.

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Boogle Hollow was the closest village to Mountebank. It was about twenty miles due east, as the horse flies. And since horses don’t fly anymore -- the last flying horse had been shot and stuffed to put on display at the Jonesonium Institute back when Aloysius Laughingstock had been a babe in gilded diapers -- Tim was forced to walk through the Tiger Woods to reach Boogle Hollow to make his first sales pitch for pet lumdiddles. The regular road, of course, was chock-a-block with lumdiddles, and impassable. He wasn’t worried about the tigers that inhabited the woods very much, since they mostly rolled little white stones around while growling “Frowr!” incessantly. And they only ate cured hams -- so healthy actors and actresses avoided the place completely.

No, what worried Tim as he tramped through the weedy undergrowth beneath the trees were the McSkeeters. They are a tribe of savagely ill-tempered pixies, with long pointy noses as hard as steel. They don’t much like people tramping through their forest -- they consider Tiger Woods to be completely their property -- so anyone they catch in the woods is subject to a very painful poking around their ankles until they get clear of the trees.

Argyle socks attracted McSkeeters by the dozens, so Tim wore plain white socks. Every snick or click in the forest underbrush caused him to start and look wildly around while performing a sort of demented folk dance with his knees alternately pumping high into the air and his arms swinging blindly about.

But he worried for nothing. The McSkeeters were all on a long visit with their distant cousins the McHoppers over the mountains. The McHoppers had very long legs and enjoyed nothing so much as vaulting over anything that was taller than they were -- and since they all were only six inches tall, that included a lot of things. They were famous for jumping over conclusions and jumpstarting arthritic horses that didn’t want to move anymore. Their leader, Leapfrog Hoptoad, was summoning all the Wee Folk in the kingdom for a Council of War. He was determined to wage war on the Tall Tails (as ordinary humans were called) and drive them into the sea, for their many insults and bullying actions against the Wee Folk. He was a bit of a hothead and burnheart. So far none but his own kin had answered his summons, which made him even more hot in the head, and he was seriously considering declaring war on all the fairies and gnomes and others who had ignored his call prior to eliminating the Tall Tails. But since he was killed by a falling acorn soon after Tim arrived at Boogle Hollow, there is really no point in going on about him or the McHoppers and McSkeeters. Sick tranny glorious Monday, as the King of the Peacocks likes to tell his subjects.  

After spending a miserable night in Tiger Woods, Tim arrived in Boogle Hollow the next day at noon. He was tired and dirty and hungry, so he headed straight for the Boogle Inn, and, spending some of the gold the Council had generously given him, was bathed and fed and napped before you could say “grumpy gumption goes to gallows.” As evening fell, he strolled about the town to work out his marketing plan for the morrow.

Boogle Hollow had a perfectly good road going through it, with not a single solitary lumdiddle on it or near it. So there was lots of hustle and bustle going on throughout the village. Even as night fell. The street lamps glowed brightly, lit with hangfire, and the shops were wide open to cater to the tourists who came to town for a look-see. Tim stopped at a bake shop for a slice of watermelon cake. He was heartened to see so many children out with their parents of an evening, strolling about without any pets on a leash. With visions of leashed lumdiddles being dragged along by every family in town, Tim went back to the Boogle Hollow Inn to sit in the tap room and chew things up with the barkeep.

“Ho, barkeep” Tim called cheerfully. “A cup of your best licorice beer, if you please!”

“Right away, good sir!” the barkeep called back happily. He had seen how Tim had paid for his lodging with good gold coin, the King’s gold coin, and was determined to keep Tim happy and well supplied with whatever expensive fripperies he wanted.

“Have one on me” Tim said expansively when the barkeep came over with the cup of licorice beer.

“Thank you, your good graciousness!” replied the barkeep. “Might I ask what brings you to our perky little village tonight?”

“Lumdiddles” Tim replied.

“Beg pardon, but what did you say? Sounded like lumdiddles.”

“Lumdiddles. That is exactly what I said. Let’s have another round of this excellent licorice beer!”

“As you wish, sir.” The barkeep was no longer certain he wanted to cozy up to this particular customer, no matter how much gold jingled in his purse. Nasty things, those lumdiddles. They took over the road to Mountebank years ago, and now the place was practically a wraith hole. But barkeeps are inherently curious fellows; they can’t stay away from a puzzle.

“Here you go, sir. And thanks for the same. You say lumdiddles brings you to Boogle Hollow -- how so?”

Tim produced a flask of pimento wine from his coat pocket, uncorking it to pour out a very groggy lumdiddle onto the bar top. The barkeep recoiled as if he’d been bitten by it already.

“Get that nasty thing off my bar!” he yelled at Tim.

“Tut - tut. No need to carry on like that. This is a domesticated lumdiddle. Perfectly harmless and good humored. It makes an ideal pet.”

To demonstrate, Tim gave the lumdiddle a little shove so that it weaved unsteadily about the bar, dragging its pincers behind it and issuing a series of tiny belches that sounded something like “koop koop.” It had taken Constable Keystone several hours to catch several beligerant lumdiddles in a quilted blanket and poke them into flasks of pimento wine for Tim before he left for Boogle Hollow. The Mountebank Council had had to promise Keystone a promotion to Field Marshall before he consented to do it.

The barkeep approached the lumdiddle cautiously.

“Domesticated, you say? What does it eat?”

“Oh any crumbs and leftovers -- it’s not a picky eater. Just keep it moistened inside a flask of pimento wine every night and it will give you years and years of unadulterated pleasure!”

“The doofus you say. Hmmm. Well, mayhaps I’ll just have to get me one for the customers to play with on a slow night. How much?”

“For you, my good man, it’s on the house. Please accept this one as a token of my esteem for your splendid taproom services” said Tim grandly, as he swept the lumdiddle back into the flask and handed it to the beaming barkeep.

“That is a handsome gesture, sir, and I’ll not forget it until the frogs turn blue!”

Just then several thirsty customers came into the taproom, asking loudly for a bottle of Old Camel’s Breath and some belly button chasers. They were in very high spirits, and looked like a reckless bunch out for as much fun as they could get before dawn.

After serving them their drinks and putting a bowl of nixie nuggets in front of them, the barkeep proudly brought over his new pet in a bottle and poured it out onto the counter.

“Here’s something you gents might enjoy” the barkeep said.

Looking steadily at the lumdiddle, one of the Old Camel’s Breath drinkers picked it up -- and swallowed it.

“Hey!” shouted the barkeep.

“Not bad” said the lumdiddle eater. “Tastes like a lumbago salad.”

So saying, he turned white as a bed sheet and fell over.

“Holy cakes of soap!” moaned the barkeep, pointing at Tim. “Look what your little pest has done -- it’s poisoned one of me best customers! Call the Constable! I want this highbinder locked up and charged with pesticide!”