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Here in Merrymouseland, the rain smells of uranium.

 

Honestly I’m not sure what that even smells like exactly,

but I imagine the rain is still heavily irradiated so that’s why I say it.

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At least I know if it gets in your eyes it’ll sting for a few minutes. If you leave it there longer, you’ll go blind. If it gets in your mouth, you’ll either puke sporadically, off and on for months, or die on the spot. If it kisses your skin, that skin will turn a bluish-green like molded bread. I’ve heard of it infecting people in all kinds of weird ways, too—growing hair there that’s not their natural color. Sprouting a spiral maw of external teeth on the elbow. I once even heard of someone with a mushroom blooming thick from within the cave of their belly button.

 

(This one, I doubt. . . I mean, who could be so lucky?

 

Mushrooms are a rare treat.)

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In other words: the worst kind of lottery.

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It occasionally looks beautiful though, in the right sunset, needling down with that luminescent glint, especially scenic from the monorail nest—my second favorite perch in all of Merrymouseland. Sitting high atop a precarious twist of track outlooking the crackodile swamps,  inside a single monorail cart that’s been bashed in like a sardine tin, it’s difficult to access. To get there, I utilize a simple weight/counter-weight system: a pully with a single foothold that I ride to the top and then pull up once there. It’s my exact weight, so for anyone else it will either immediately snap or will fail to lift them.

 

While Stormer’s Cove is still the prime perch for the view it

affords one of the entire park, the monorail nest often feels safer.

 

Hidden and secret, a pocket of fresh sanctuary tucked away,

if such a thing can even exist here.

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It’s where I sit now, sewing sutures into Mausenstein and watching the wolfpups

down below, licking up puddles of rainwater.

 

 

(♪ Currently playing ♪: Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1.)

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Ives is the only one with enough sense to know this is bad for him, and I fear that the other three wolfpups aren’t cut out for this world. Maybe they’ll learn, but I doubt it.

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There may come a point when something might need to be done about that?

 

By which I mean: Some animals kill their young when

those young are sick or extraordinarily weak.

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It’s survival of the fittest, I know, but I like to think mercy is also in there

somewhere…an equally important portion of a seemingly macabre equation.

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