Willy the Wombat
Wombats are nocturnal Australian marsupials known for marking territory with cube-shaped poop. They use powerful claws to dig extensive underground tunnel systems and have a backward-facing pouch that keeps dirt out. They are also equipped with unique, fused backbones that create a hard, protective rump.
The sun had just set in Tasmania when Willy the Wombat emerged from his hole to admire his five perfect cubes of poop. He sniffed with pride as the warm scent of defecation soothed his wombat soul. Perched in positivity, he was interrupted by a disconcerting rumble from his left.
He grimaced. Here we go again.
Two small claws shot through the dirt, followed by Patricia from the HOA, ascending a hole.
Willy didn’t need an explanation for her visit. Her beady eyes said it all.
“Willllllllly!”
“Yes, Patricia?”
“How many times have we warned you about our two-cube policy?”
Willy scanned the dark horizon before parking his rock-hard bum on the ground in front of his hole. “Well, I suppose it depends on the definition of a warning. Is a fine a warning, technically?”
She grimaced and a perfectly cubed stool emerged from her rear. It was marvelous, and not only because of size and architecture—it even smelled better than anything Willy had ever furnished.
“Do you see what your sass does to me?” Patricia put a paw to her forehead like a damsel in distress. “I was saving that for my kids! They’re learning to cube and I needed that for an array!”
Willy shook his head. He knew Patricia had suffered a lonely childhood, her days burrowed at home watching re-runs of pre-talkie films while her parents worked in the mines. But that was beside the point. After Patricia’s parents died in The Great Mine Disaster, the governor’s wife had adopted her, and she remained a haughty Loyalist, so Willy despised her. He was Tasmanian.
“I made you poop?” Willy asked, his incisors preventing him from hiding a smirk.
“No!” Patricia shrieked. “You made me leave the comfort of my den to risk devils, dingoes, and quolls.” She narrowed her eyes. “And let’s not pretend this is the first time.”
“Well, no one asked you to come.”
“Willy, if you can’t follow the rules, we’ll have to take your case to court.”
Willy’s heart sank and he wished he’d saved some dirt in his backward pouch from his morning to throw at her. Resigned to words, he said, “Oh yeah? You and what army?”
“This isn’t funny. The last time someone pushed me this far, he was exiled to the dunes, where burrowing is impossibleand you sleep with one eye open, in perilous fear of the devils.”
Willy’s shoulders sagged. No wombat had ever ventured in and out of the dunes.
“That’s what I thought,” Patricia replied with her most offensive sharp toothed grin. “Now remove three of your cubes, or I will see you in court.” With that, she spun around and burrowed back into her hole before Willy could give her the middle claw.
What the hell is wrong with her? He thought. I can’t believe she’s in charge. This is outrageous!
Then it hit him, the solution to his problems. He would run against her for HOA chair! “That’ll show her!” he hollered at the moon. “I’ll get her good!”
***
Five sunsets later, Willy was dressed in his finest cloak, standing at one of two lecterns on a stage, facing his peers. Well, except Martha, who was homebound with mange.
At the other lectern, wearing a plastic smile, stood his nemesis, Patricia J. Drongo. “Please, please. Settle down!” she screeched into her microphone.
Like dutiful soldiers, fifty wombats ceased conversing and swiveled their rumps to face the stage.
What is everyone so afraid of? Willy thought. She’s just a bored, Type-A wombat!
“Thank you,” Patricia said through clenched teeth. She pointed a paw at Willy. “I know all of us wish we could be home with our families, settling in for sixteen hours of sleep.”
“It’s just an hour!” Willy said.
Patricia cleared her throat then continued. “But Willy does not understand what separates us, the noble, northern hairy-nosed wombats, from those cretins in the South.”
She bristled and Willy felt palpable tension in the room. “And what, exactly, separates us?” he asked.
“I’d like to remind everyone that we’re governed by the Vestigal Code of Procedure. This means we take turns, like civil wombats, and don’t interrupt each other,” Patricia said.
“But you had finished your point!” Willy protested.
“I had not!” Patricia barked. “I was pausing for dramatic effect.”
Willy scoffed and looked out with disbelief, hoping for support, but even his best friend Dinkum was avoiding eye contact. How could I have already lost them? He returned his attention to Patricia. “OK. Sorry for interrupting. But you were taking cheap digs at the South. I’d hardly call that honorable. Even the Vestigial Code recognizes their basic rights!”
Patricia rolled her eyes and a large chunk of the crowd growled with agreement. “What are you, a Southie?” one gruff wombat shouted from the back.
Willy squinted, as if that would reprimand the offender, then swiveled to face Patricia, who was nodding, with folded arms, a portrait of smug.
“Now then,” she scolded. “As much as we’d all love to go home, Willy does have the right to run against me for chair, so despite our reasonable reservations, let’s give him a proper chance to make his case. Even wombats like him deserve that.” She glanced at the clock on the cave’s wall. “But we do have a strict time limit, so let’s get this over with.”
“Over with? I haven’t even—”
“Hurry up!” A different voice shouted from the crowd. “I’m missing my kids’ poop-time!”
***
An hour later, Willy sat alone on his rump in the dark, in front of his lectern. One lousy vote? What’s wrong with these bats? How can they prefer that meddling, pretentious jill over me? There’s no reason to limit how much poop we stack in front of our holes!
He left to blow off some steam with a stroll in the dark, but when he heard an owl screech, instinct took over and he returned to the cave. What am I going to do? he wondered. “Am I really supposed to just suck it up and let Patricia rule over my lifestyle?” he shouted.
“No. You’re not,” a voice answered from behind.
Willie spun around, but didn’t see anyone. “Hello?”
The room remained silent.
“I must be losing my mind.” He shook his head, but despite his bravado, between the owl and that voice, he was pretty scared. I should just dig a hole and go home. This isn’t worth it, he reasoned.
“Oh but it is!” the same voice called out, only this time, it was coming from above.
Willie shot his head up. “This isn’t funny! Who’s doing that?”
He heard a psychedelic swoosh, and a luminescent blue wombat swooped down and landed in front of him. It looked like every other wombat he’d ever seen, save for its stunning blue glow. There wasn’t a word to describe it, so Willy’s mind chose “aura” to explain it to himself. And as if that weren’t already enough to give him a heart attack, this wombat had somehow flown from the ceiling of the cave without wings or any other body part that could do such a thing.
“Wh-who-wh-what are you?” Willy asked, grasping for verbal straws.
“I am the great wombat God of the South,” the blue sort-of-wombat replied.
