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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