Lookin' a Gassed Horse in the Mouse
Ned Nedmiller, Concerned Housewife 

Monday, Oct. 15, 2001

Nedwrinkle Nedmiller has a dream, ladies and gentlementarians. It is a dream that one day a giant mouse will come to town driving a fire truck, and everyone will give that mouse money, but Nedmiller will be out of money. Ned spent all his money buying cream pies to throw at the governor on the Eve of Meringue, a holiday tradition that goes back as far as the settlin’ days, when the wild coyotes played Frisbee in the prairies and them prairie dogs done pushed a couch into the river and nobody can get their undershorts washed for Sunday churchin’ because of it. Goddamn them prairie dogs.

In this dream Nedmonkey’s got no cash to be givin to the fire-truck driving mouse, and is feeling right ashamed because of it. The rest of the town is having a grand old time, giving the firetruck mouse their tens and twenties, their fives and their rare commemorative eight dollar bills that were minted so folks wouldn’t have to break a twenty when they’re renting rollerskates for the annual Holy Molar-Rink skating party to promote good teeth and God and all. Though Ned always had to break a 20 anyways since he liked to get his skates sharpened and his incisors capped on a yearly basis.

So every damned body is forking over their greenbacks to the fire-truck driving mouse, little kids be smashing open their pigglybanks with little newborn puppies and women older than Union Steel are prying open them change purses to fling their buffalo nickels at the mouse. And there’s Nedrumple, penniless and excluded, feelin’ like a polo jockey on prom night.

So Ned hops on the back of a pair of safety scissors that’re waltzin down the street, and rides them lefties to Giant Land, where things is bigger than average. Ned sneaks into a giant’s house and steals himself a gigantic mousetrap from the giant’s attic. On the way out, Ned hears a boomin’ voice speak out “Feeb Flies Fort Fumes! I Smell the Cologne of an Old Spice Man!” but Nedrip is purely an ambergris kind of Nedmiller so the biggun must’ve been speaking to another tiny man come visiting from the Land of Average-Sized Things. Anyhow, t’was not Ned’s concern so he made his way back home via a hole in the Time-Life Conundrum, picking up some butterfly milk on the way home.

Once back in the Land of Things Not So Large, Ned set up them giant mouse-trap in the middle of Rhubarb street, aimin’ to teach that giant mouse a lesson about comin’ to town and acceptin’ money from everybody on days when Nedro was flush out of funds. Ned was about to think up a brilliant plan to lure them mouse into them hinged contraption of doom when out of nowhere the governor came running up to see if the mouse would take Mastercard. The gov’ner done stepped in one of Ned’s cream pies, which stuck to his shoe and he stumbled right into the giant mouse trap, which cut him in half like a giant fellow bent on making a meal of governors.

It was as tragic a scene as Ned has been witness to in the last three-quarters of an hour, but when that trap came down on the governor, just before he was divided into two equal half-governors, he let out a squeak just like a giant mouse would be expected to do, resulting in such comedy that Ned and the giant mouse laughed themselves half silly. Having bonded so completely, Ned and the giant mouse went and sat on top of the great pyramid and ate giant flavored gumdrops, best friends from that day forward. Until moments later when Ned was woken up quite unexpectedly by crabs a-nibblin’ on his toes and the dreamtime was done. Ned Nedmiller has this dream.