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While I was sitting out in the National Park by myself, a snail came by. Knowing how Poison Pie loved slime, I crouched over the snail and said, "Is that you, Poison Pie?" (Poison Pie is a very powerful man of the mushroom people; he is capable of transmogrification when it suits him.) "No," said the snail. "It ain't me." Well, that was an ambiguous reply if ever I heard one. "Are you really a snail?" I asked the snail. "No," said the snail. "I am a mushroom." "You look like a snail," I said. "Well, you have to realize that things are not always as they appear. Looks not only can be deceiving, but by my judgment were invented for the sole purpose of deception!" said the snail. "Take a look at you. You look like one of them people going around." "Well, I am not," I told the snail, "I am a man of the mushroom people, just like Poison Pie." "Hah!" scoffed the snail in disbelief. "What's so great about Poison Pie?" I told the snail just precisely what was so great about Poison Pie. I told him about digging holes and about crying into them until they filled over your head and you drowned. I told the snail about the two great smothering mitts with which Poison Pie suffocated the liveliest fires of passion. I told him about the songs of the mushroom people that Poison Pie sang, when the spirit moved him. I told the snail alot, but not everything. No sooner had I finished my oration than Poison Pie thundered out of the depths of the forest and crashed to a halt beside me. He looked down where my attention was directed at the snail, snatched it up and gobbled it down in one bite. "Escargo," said Poison Pie. He gave me a mean look and added, "So send me to Leavenworth, you son of a bitch." |
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