This Week's (Feb 9) Minden Times Column
A dark and heavy despondency had
fallen over the forest. The creatures who worked and lived there brooded over
their declining state of affairs.
The beavers complained about jobs lost
to workers in other faraway forests. Rabbits, bears, foxes, birds and others
worried about illegal immigrants entering the forest, bringing different
cultures, religions, and terrorism.
Meanwhile, the super rich got
richer while the poor got poorer. The middle class was evaporating. Forest
society was a mess.
Fears for the future drove many to
despair. Increasing numbers chewed mind-bending leaves and snorted magic
mushroom powders, once available only
when prescribed by owls, the
physicians of the forest.
The decline in the forest also was
marked by a loss of intelligence, and a lessening in tolerance for others’
views. Noisy barking and cawing overran reasoned debates and compromises became
impossible.
Most of the noise came from the crows
who squawked and jeered about making the forest great again. The loudest voice
came from the crow Puffball, named because he swelled up to twice his size
whenever he cawed, which was often.
It was said that Puffball dyed his
feathers and used hairspray to make himself look sleek and majestic.
“Terrible. Really bad,” he cawed
about life in the forest. “Horrible! Disgusting!”
The crows, then all the other
creatures, turned to him in hopes that he could make their forest great again.
“The forest is in trouble. It’s
terrible,” he croaked. “But we’re going to straighten it out. OK? That’s what I
do. I fix things. We’re going to straighten it out. It starts now.”
Puffball decided to build a high
wall across the forest’s southern border. That would stop the illegals from sneaking
in with drugs and intent to rape and pillage.
Construction began immediately.
The beavers cut trees with their sharp teeth. The bears and the moose hauled
the logs while legions of other creatures set them in place.
One day a crow patrolling the
forest border spotted light blinking from an abandoned farm house. He swooped
down to investigate and found in the rubble pieces of a shattered mirror
reflecting the sun’s beams.
He clamped his beak on one of the
pieces and flew back to the grand White Oak where Puffball was signing orders.
“Look what I’ve found, Chief,” the
crow cawed excitedly. “If you stand over it you can see yourself in it.”
“Fantastic!” Puffball croaked
while trying to get a full view of himself in the small piece of mirror.
“Amazing. Are there any larger pieces?”
A flight of crows left the White
Oak immediately to find a larger piece. Two hours later they struggled back
with a piece large enough for Puffball to see his whole self. He hopped back
and forth in front of it, preening and cawing about how the forest already was
starting to be great again.
The crows found a spot to place
the mirror piece so Puffball could walk in front of it often as he went about
his day.
Work on the wall progressed
through the summer, which was unusually sunny and hot.
One morning Puffball was passing
the mirror and moved it to get a better look at himself. As the sun rose higher
during the day, the mirror caught the sun’s rays head on and reflected them onto
the tinder dry forest floor.
Soon dry leaves on the forest
floor began to smolder and white smoke curled into the air. Within minutes there
was flame that grew and leaped into other parts of the forest.
All the birds, animals and
reptiles panicked. They gathered their children and fled the best they could as
the flames grew higher and advanced greedily through the forest.
A few days later a doe and her
fawn walked to the edge of where the forest had been. All that remained was
blackened tree stumps and grey ash. The carcasses of some animals that could
not run fast enough could be seen rotting in the sun.
“What destroyed our forest,
mother?” asked the fawn. “It was supposed to be
great again.”
“Vanity, little one,” said the
doe. “Vanity. The ruin that comes when popularity becomes more important than
honesty and truth.”
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