Plouie's Reactions to Stimuli Are Inherently Unpredictable

Yesterday afternoon I spent several hours happily rearranging my books.  This had some unanticipated consequences: a terrified chupacabra and a religiously inspired penguin.

Submitting my dissertation a few weeks ago necessitated returning all of my library books.  We're talking about sixty, seventy-odd books; an entire bookcase was devoted to holding them.  I acquire new books faster than I can read them, and I read very fast (as in, I've had complete strangers come up to me and comment on how fast I read), so that extra shelf space was sorely needed, let me tell you.  Now I actually have five empty shelves, which is a dangerous thing.

Since I had so many empty shelves, I decided to let the chupacabra have one.  It had been sitting with the books on mythology, but it had to be on the very edge, and I thought it might prefer a bit more space.  Plus, there are more people for it to talk to on the other side of the room.  We still can't communicate with it, but I'm hoping that if it's closer to a larger number of potential conversation partners, it might start picking up bits of English or Common.  So the chupacabra now shares a shelf with the Calling Cat and the Elegant Elephant.  You have not previously heard of the Calling Cat or the Elegant Elephant because neither of them is plush.

Seleucus, Rusty, Magick, and Plouie had been hanging out in the south room last week, but it was time for Seleucus and Rusty to go back to the north room, so AJD came to get them.  (This is just as well, because I don't really have capacity for more than two visitors.)  Seleucus was ready to go back of his own accord, but Rusty wanted to stay, especially with Magick in here.  He didn't have a choice in the matter, though: Alfredo was insistent that his brief vacation from lessons was over.  Rusty was only persuaded to go without being forcibly dragged when it was pointed out to him that he wouldn't have to put up with Plouie any more.  After that he was rather eager to leave.

Before they headed out, AJD asked how Plouie had reacted to the chupacabra, and I realised that he probably wasn't aware of it yet.  Plouie's observational skills are predictably minimal.  He wouldn't have noticed it from across the room, and the chupacabra's new shelf isn't particularly near the floor.  AJD admitted he was very curious to see what would happen when Plouie finally noticed the chupacabra, and pointed out that there's no telling how Plouie will react to anything.

We looked at each other.  The temptation became too strong to resist.  We had to introduce Plouie to the chupacabra immediately.

I moved the Calling Cat a bit so that there was room for Plouie to roost on the shelf.  The moment I plunked him down, Plouie all but pounced on the chupacabra and started hugging it.  I had to pull him off.  The chupacabra tried to disappear into its corner.  It was terrified, poor thing.  It's usually so inscrutable, too; I think this was the first identifiable reaction we've seen from it.  (We apologised, but I'm not sure it understood.)

Our first thought was that Plouie was in love with the chupacabra.  This was a reasonable conclusion, given the data.  ('Poor chupacabra,' AJD said.  'An amorous Plouie would scare anyone.')  But this turned out to be incorrect.  After I'd removed him from the shelf, Plouie turned around, looked up at the chupacabra, and started repeatedly bowing to it.  He was venerating it.

Naturally this confused us immensely.  After all, Plouie's thoughts on religion are very well-known around here, and the chupacabra is very clearly not a blue penguin.  

The only way to unravel this conundrum, unfortunately, was to ask Plouie himself, and this took a very long time, because Plouie is Plouie.  There wasn't an obvious way to ask him about his religion without mentioning the Blue Penguin of Happiness, and whenever you do that he gets very excited and starts jumping all over the place exclaiming 'The Blue Penguin of Happiness!' over and over and basically becomes even less coherent than he usually is.  But we were finally able to get an answer out of him: Plouie has concluded that the chupacabra is the Footman of the Blue Penguin of Happiness and therefore to be adored and venerated.

Apparently the Blue Penguin of Happiness has both a Footman and a Handmaiden.  Who knew Plouie was capable of such complicated cosmology?

Anyway, so Plouie thinks the chupacabra is some sort of divine avatar.  We need to explain this to the poor chupacabra (and also assure it that we're never going to let Plouie get that close to it again), which probably means we need to bring in Pedro.