Category: Fiction

Once upon a time, in a galaxy, far, far away, there lived a small and deter­mined band of heroes who fought evil for rea­sons con­cern­ing Truth, Jus­tice and the Amer­i­can Way. Since Truth and Jus­tice are, at best, sub­jec­tive terms whose def­i­n­i­tions change depend­ing on who has pow­er and since no one who they fought for [or against] had any idea what the Amer­i­can Way was [since this hap­pened else­where a good god­damn long time ago] their tights and capes were prompt­ly con­fis­cat­ed and they were put away. Instead of telling you their sto­ry, I am, instead, going to tell you this one.

There was once a snut who lived in the for­est. This was a good place for a snut to live because the favorite food of a snut is the root-tip of the fab­u­lous fug­wup tree. The snut looked like a very small tapir; if you can imag­ine a tapir around the size of a shih tzu, and had soft and sub­tly var­ie­gat­ed fur and was lone­ly. Snuts are typ­i­cal­ly soli­tary crea­tures, but they must come togeth­er to breed and they typ­i­cal­ly stay togeth­er until their young is raised. It had been so long since this snut had seen a fel­low snut that it was begin­ning to despair ever find­ing one again.

In fact, the for­est was­n’t as fun as it used to be. The fug­wup trees were get­ting hard­er to find and when the snut did come across one, it was often sick­ly and its roots tast­ed bit­ter. The snut had even tried eat­ing the berries of the graz bush when fug­wups were par­tic­u­lar­ly scarce, but they gave the snut a belly­ache and made it dizzy. Even the oth­er for­est ani­mals seemed more sub­dued, the snut heard few­er birds and the few ani­mals it came across looked at him odd­ly. There were often vio­lent and alien sounds to be heard in the dis­tant parts of the for­est. One day the snut even acci­dent­ly ran in to its most fear­some preda­tor, the kata. The kata did­n’t eat the snut, how­ev­er. Instead, she gave it a pitied look, took a deep breath, turned and dis­ap­peared into the near­est graz bush.

The snut was shocked at this behav­ior, but still great­ly relieved. It even absent­mind­ed­ly ate some grazber­ries in its bemuse­ment. The snut had run in to this behav­ior before, almost as if the oth­er ani­mals knew some­thing about its kind which the snut was­n’t aware. As it moved off into the evening, the snut crossed a stream, went down a hill, rolled in some par­tic­u­lar­ly nice leaf mold and crossed some­thing new to its expe­ri­ence. A hard black riv­er that hurt its feet. All of these strange and excit­ing events had briefly made the snut for­get how lone­ly it was, but after cross­ing the black riv­er the immense soli­tude came rush­ing back.

The snut want­ed a mate; it was­n’t as young as it used to be and it felt an urgent need to make its mark before it became com­plete­ly unat­trac­tive to oth­er snuts. This was the right time of year to come across oth­er snuts, the breed­ing sea­son, but in all of last year it had only come across three oth­er snuts. A fam­i­ly to be exact, a snoot a snout and a snit. They had come up to the snut and snuf­fled it before mov­ing off into the for­est.

While recall­ing all of this, the snut had become quite phys­i­cal­ly ill from the grazber­ries it had eat­en ear­li­er and quite men­tal­ly ill from the trau­ma of lone­li­ness. The snut’s eyes were water­ing heav­i­ly and it coughed up a bit a graz juice and stum­bled against a tree. It had­n’t seen a healthy fug­wup tree in just about as long as it had­n’t seen anoth­er snut. Once the major­i­ty of the dizzi­ness had worn off it tot­tered for­ward toward a clear­ing. Life was­n’t all bad. The weath­er was the same and the snut rev­eled in the rain­wa­ter that washed its fur, and the dirt smelled the same and the snut loved to feel it between its feet. It still found joy in its life.

There was a sud­den, sharp pain in the snut’s hind leg, the world spun and the last snut felt itself lift­ed into the sky. There is dan­gled. There it writhed. There it died. Three days lat­er a man came into the clear­ing, cut down the stiff­ened corpse, skinned the snut and tossed the car­cass into a stream. It was a stroke of luck to have caught a snut, they were so rare now. Its skin would fetch him a nice price at the log­ging camp down the road.