THE IMAGINARY WOMBAT

By now I should know better than to unnecessarily delay my meals. I turn more "emotional" when the blood sugar is low. So when I left the house after shilly shallying all afternoon I was not quite by my right self. Lunch in Chinatown corrected that state, and while heading down Beckett Street I noticed Tat Yee at a nearby tavern, already in his cups. Stuff was being erected on Grant, so I stayed in the alleys until I got to Portsmouth Square, where the wildlife was starting to forage for their evening meal and the elderly card players were diminishing.

A few hours later I returned to Chinatown. The erection on Grant had grown. And because of the warmish nighttime breeze there were more people about, some of them normal, some possibly zombies, and a few shlepping their bedding. Like my father I look more foxy and likeable at this age, which is not entirely a good thing. It attracts unstable people, like zombies and bed-schleps.

My father was lucky in that regard. I still remember the time a very attractive young lady leaned over and asked me "is he your handsomer older brother?"

Umm, no. No, he isn't.

In this city, random people attracted to foxes may be entirely screwy. So after the strange white woman on Grant Avenue had tried to engage me in conversation about Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats, and Rand Paul, I calmly informed her that I was a wombat, and craved roots and tubers. Which sadly none of the major parties were promising me and what is this world coming to? The trick is to outcrazy the nutballs, and disquiet them enough that they leave one alone. Which, after my sharing that datum with her, she did, muttering to no one in particular that maybe she should smoke a pipe so that people would listen.

This wombat was at the time that this conversation took place waiting for the bookseller, so that the weekly night time jaunting could commence. Burgers, caffeinated beverages, and a visit to two agreeable drinking holes.

The preambular pipe smoked during the wait takes forty minutes.
Several unstable people approached in that time.
I am a rabid wombat, oh yes.
So, not a fox.

Look, I would not mind in the slightest if a completely sane and likable young lady university graduate shyly approached, to strike up an intelligent conversation with a fox smoking his pipe, but in this city that's hideously unlikely.

Wherefore I am the walrus, I am the eggman, I am a wombat.


Per Wikipedia, Wombats are short-legged, muscular marsupials. Wombats leave distinctive cubic faeces. Wombat teeth lack roots and are ever-growing, like the incisors of rodents. Their diets consist mostly of grasses, sedges, herbs, bark, and roots.


No, I am not going to draw a wombat smoking a pipe. That would be absurd. Pipe tobacco is horribly expensive in Australia, they probably can't afford it.



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