Once upon a time - I think it was last Thursday,

a boy named Peter opened the gate and went out into the big green

meadow.



On the branch of a big tree sat a little bird.



"All is quiet", said the bird.



"HOLY COW, a talking BIRD!", thought Peter.



Just then, Bruce the Duck came waddling by.

Bruce was very happy that Peter hadn't closed gate

and he decided to check out the deep pond in the meadow.

Billy the Bird saw the Duck, so he

decided to fly down and pick an argument with him.



"What kind of bird are you if you can't fly?", he said;

to which the Duck cleverly replied, "I'm a DUCK, sth-stupid!"



They argued and argued. The Duck swimming in the pond.

The little bird skipping aling the shore.

Sorry.



Suddenly, something caught Peter's eye - and you know how painful that

can be.

It was Louie the Cat crawling through the grass.



Louie the Cat thought, "If the Bird is busy arguing, I-I'll just grab

him".



So quietly, Louie crept towards him on his velvet paws.

Well, his paws weren't really velvet ... they were, you know,

kind of like velvet. It's a, what d'ya call it?

Uh, a "metaphor". It's a metaphor, get it?



"LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!

LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!" advised Peter.



The bird immediately flew up into the tree ...

while Bruce the Duck quacked at Louie the Cat ...

from the middle of the pond. Louie the Cat walked around the tree and

thought,

"I-Is it worth climbing up so high, or should I just send out for

pizza?"



Grandfather came out. He was all bent out of shape

because Peter had gone into the meadow.



"It's a dangerous place. If a Wolf should come out of the forest,

then what would you do, huh?"

Peter did not answer, because after all, it was a rhetorical question.



Boys like Peter are afraid of a lot of things,

like nuclear annihilation and flunking algebra,

but they're not afraid of wolves.

But Grandfather got Peter in a headlock and dragged him home,

telling him that he was grounded and that

he couldn't watch any cartoons for three weeks.



Just then, as luck would have it,

a big, mean, hairy, ferocious, snarling, carnivorous Wolf DID

come out of the forest! But I guess we all knew that was coming.

I mean, the story is called, "Peter and the Wolf".

We couldn't very well call it, "Peter and the Wolf" if there wasn't any

Wolf,

could we? Huh, that would be really stupid.



The Cat was up the tree in a twinkling - which is about ... oh ... 2.3

seconds.



Bruce the Duck quacked SO hard that

he propelled himself backwards and up onto dry land.



For those of you taking notes,

this is a fine practical example of Newton's First Law of Motion ...

which clearly states that for every action there is an equal and

opposite reaction.



But no matter how quickly Bruce tried to waddle away,

he couldn't escape Seymour the Wolf whowas wearing his best pair of

tennis shoes.



The Wolf was closing in on the Duck.

It was getting closer and closer and closer and then and then

..



HE GOT 'EM! He got 'em! Oh no-! Oh, it was terrible!

Oh, oh I can't believe it! Oh! The humanity!

The humanity! Oh my God! Ahh-hoh, oh-



And then with one big gulp, Seymour "wolfed" him down.



Um, let me recap the story briefly in case you just walked into the

room:

Louie the Cat was sitting on one branch ...

Billy the Bird was on another branch ...

not TOO close to Louie, and Bob the Janitor

was at home defrosting his refrigerator.



The Wolf walked around the tree SO many times that he made a small

trench.



Meanwhile, Peter was standing behind the closed gate,

videotaping everything that was going on.



Suddenly Peter got an idea.

He ran home and got a big spool of his Grandfather's unwaxed dental

floss.



One of the branches of the tree that

the Wolf was circling was conveniently stretched out over a high stone

wall.

Peter scaled the wall, lickity-split! - which is even faster than a

twinkling.

Then he grabbed the branch and climbed onto the tree.



Peter said to Billy the Bird,

"I want you to fly down and circle around the Wolf's head to distract

him,

but be very careful he doesn't catch you and

bash your skull in and tear out your lungs and

chew you up into itsy-bitsy teeny-tiny little pieces!"



"Okay", said the bird.



Billy the Bird almost touched the Wolf's head with his wings

while the Wolf snapped angrily at him.



"Go ahead", said the Wolf, "make my day".



"Come on, cut it out", snarled the Wolf, "you're askin' for trouble,

punk".

But Billy the Bird just kept on harassing him.



Meanwhile, Peter made a lasso out of the dental floss and,

carefully letting it down . . . caught the Wolf by the tail and

pulled with all his might. Feeling himself caught,

the Wolf got really ticked off and started jerking back and forth.

Peter tied the other end of the dental floss to the tree and

left the Wolf dangling in mid-air.



"Hey, Big Bad Wolf", said Peter, "why don't you come up here and get us

now?"



"I would", said the Wolf, "but, well, I'm kinda tied up right now."



Just then, some members of the National Rifle Association came out of

the woods, firing their magnums, uzies and bazookas.



But Peter yelled, "Don't shoot. Billy the Bird and I have caught the

Wolf.

Now, let's take him to the Zoo".



"Great idea!", said the hunters, "and if he likes that,

next week we'll take him to Disneyland!"



Just imagine the victory parade ... Peter was at the head.

But after a few minutes he was through and

then the parade began with Peter at the very front.

After him, the hunters leading Seymour the Wolf.

Then Grandfather, and Louie the Cat, and finally,

Bob the janitor who had to sweep up the whole mess.



Grandfather shook his head discontentedly,

"Well, Peter, what if you hadn't caught the Wolf? What then?"



"Well", said Peter, "he probably would have ripped out my intestines

with his teeth."



"", said Grandfather,

"I know that, you idiot. It was a rhetorical question."



Above them, Billy the Bird chirped proudly. "Yeah, that's right. We bad.

We bad".



Granfather decided that he'd had enough of the pond and

the meadow and the whole stinking scene,

so he ran off to Los Angeles and joined a Heavy Metal band.



And what about Bruce the Duck? Well,

the Wolf had been in such a hurry that he swallowed him ...

alive! Which means the gastric juices slowly disolved his body and

he died a long, painful death.



However, you'll be happy to hear that just a few years later

he was reincarnated as ... Shirley MacLaine.



And the moral of the story is ...



Oral hygiene is very important. Make sure you see your dentist at least

twice a year.



sallysally@usa.net