Zzzzzzzzzz

I'm not really sure why AJD wanted to take this picture of me and Alfredo, but he did, so here it is.

My Little Gilly Monster

Gilly and I have this rather silly game we like to play with each other.  It consists of him pretending to eat me, and it goes something like this: we'll be hanging out, often cuddling a bit, and then he kind of starts gnawing on me a little bit.  He likes gnawing on me, for some reason, although he doesn't eat me very much.  Red pandas aren't that carnivorous - they eat mostly bamboo - but they do eat birds and insects and small mammals.  I'm not, from Gilly's perspective, a very small mammal, and part of the game is that I have to remind him of this.

When I remind him that he's probably not supposed to eat me, he puts on this dramatic display of innocence - Gilly does a very good dramatic display of innocence - and then I scratch behind his ears and call him my little Gilly-monster, and then he nibbles me a little in good monster fashion and then the game is over.  There's also a shorter variation we play sometimes, if I refer to him as my little Gilly-monster without him first attempting to eat me.

...I never said it was a particularly thrilling game, but we rather enjoy it.  Especially him, because he's not the one getting eaten.

Wild Republic Deathmatch

Summer is a slow time for the government in the Wild Republic.   It's the time when the legislative bodies adjourn and everyone else takes turns having vacations so that they can go home and hang out with their own species for a while.  This is less true in local chapters like ours; everyone gets a bit of vacation, but not at once, and the chapter is expected to stay open and operating as usual nevertheless.  With so many government employees on vacation elsewhere, though, this makes things a bit dull for the local chapters.  This means that everyone has more time to themselves; but it also means that they get a bit bored.

I think this is why they decided to have a local Deathmatch.  Apparently it was Mimsy's idea.

By the time AJD and I got wind of this, they'd already more or less worked out how it would go.  They had the tournament brackets all set up, so everyone knew who their first opponent would be.  Everyone was supposed to participate, including the youngsters and visiting diplomats.  Even level-headed types you'd expect to raise objections to this scheme - like Leprosy and Lady Faraday - were really into the whole idea.  (It must be noted that Leprosy was scheduled to fight Plouie, and therefore may have had an ulterior motive.  Lady Faraday was going to fight Rochester and has no such excuse.)  Let this be a lesson to you: civilisation only takes you so far.

Before anyone reading this gets too excited: no, this didn't end up happening.  It was called off at the eleventh hour.  Mind you, it wasn't called off because everyone came to their senses; or at least, not exactly.  It was called off because Desmond suddenly pointed out that Magick was going to win.

I don't think that the fact that Desmond, a manatee and rabbinical student, was scheduled to fight Murchison, an arctic fox and special agent, should detract from the wisdom and perspicacity of this observation.

Anyway, that was kind of the end of it.  Of course Magick was going to win.  It was blatantly obvious in retrospect.  So much so that it was agreed that they didn't need to go to all the trouble of having the fights to determine the winner.  Magick has been proclaimed the Official Champion of Wild Republic Deathmatch and everyone settled down to have a party.  I mean, parties are good too.

Magick suggested a poker game, but no one took him up on it.

Despite all the excitement that had been brewing over the cancelled event, there was surprisingly little disappointment in the group.  I guess they really were mostly bored.  In fact, there were only two disappointed personages: Rusty and Navarre.

My understanding is that the initial match-ups were the result of chance; Quixley wrote some sort of script that randomised them.  Therefore, perhaps no one should be blamed for an unfortunate oversight produced by the script.  Rusty's first match was to have been with Laszlo and Navarre's with Cami.  The winners of these two matches, however, were to fight each other; and Rusty and Navarre were grimly excited for this.  Each of them was dead certain that they'd win the first match, and then they would have a completely sanctioned reason to beat the shit out of each other, as they've been longing to do for months.  (I think they may be underestimating Laszlo, but never mind that.)  Now, with the golden opportunity snatched away just hours before, they were pretty devastated.

So one Deathmatch match did actually happen.  While everyone else was imbibing various spirits and telling stories, Rusty and Navarre snuck into the corner and succeeded in beating the shit out of each other.  The match ended in a draw.  Here they are; somehow in the excitement no one noticed what they were up to until it was over.

Since the fight was no longer sanctioned, technically they needed to be punished.  Discipline was left to Jasper, who decided that they really couldn't be blamed that much, given the oversight.  Offering a lion and a tiger a likely chance to duke it out and then snatching it away?  Not a great idea.  Feeling some degree of responsibility in the whole affair, and also noting that they'd already done a damn good job of punishing each other, Jasper decided to put them in detention together for the next twenty-four hours, where they proceeded to ignore each other.

 

This is as far apart as they can get until they're out of detention.

Jasper's opinion is that when they emerge from detention, they'll either have found a new common ground, or they'll pretend that the whole shameful episode never occurred.  His money is on the second.  The first, in his view, is not improbable, but he thinks they have a lot more fights to get through before they make it there.

It's still a new record

Okay, the fun's over.  Sleepyhead has fallen back to sleep, and Seal is upright again (he says he has a pounding headache).  It's still not clear whether Sleepyhead's unusual wakefulness was the result of Pedro's examination or not, but either way he appears to have reverted back to normal.  He stayed awake for a good forty-seven minutes, though - very impressive by his standards.

Out of Character

Hmm.  It seems that Pedro's examination had an unexpected result: Sleepyhead is awake right now.  He's been awake for all of fifteen minutes!  Look at this.  He stayed awake long enough for the event to be captured on camera.

You may be wondering what exactly Seal is doing upside down like that.  He says he's trying to encourage Sleepyhead to stay awake by being particularly entertaining.  I'd say I hope Sleepyhead appreciates how many creatures have inverted themselves for him lately, but I know he doesn't.

To be fair, this may not be a direct result of Pedro's efforts at all.  Sleepyhead didn't actually wake up while he was being examined, so it may have been coincidence.

Pedro's Working Vacation

Pedro recently took his turn in the south room, having earned a bit of respite from kittenish antics.  It proved to be a working vacation, but I would like to stress that this was entirely Pedro's own idea; no one pushed him to work while he was off.

This was Pedro's first tour of south room duty, which meant that it was his first encounter with Sleepyhead.  All of Pedro's medical instincts went into red alert when he realised just how much sleeping Sleepyhead does on a typical day.  'No healthy panda ought to sleep this much,' he informed me, and immediately set about trying to get to the bottom of this.

Sleepyhead, however, is not a particularly cooperative patient.  He'd apparently decided that he wanted to sleep on the floor between my mattress and the nearest bookcase, and he had himself wedged in there pretty good, with the result that there was no room for Pedro to really get in there with him.  Pedro's principal technique in diagnosis involves judicious sniffing; he requires close proximity to his patients.  Naturally there was no chance that Sleepyhead would come out on his own, either, and Pedro is too small to move him around if he's not helping.  Magick was on south room duty too, but he refused to get involved, although he watched the proceedings with something suspiciously akin to amusement.

So, after grilling Seal for about twenty minutes for a full description of Sleepyhead's habits (which Seal tolerated very good-naturedly), Pedro sort of hung himself upside down over the edge of the mattress and went to work.  This must be a terribly awkward position in which to conduct medical examinations, so he deserves commendation for his devotion to his medical calling.

This is an unusually good picture of Magick.  Usually attempts to photograph him just result in a sort of Shapeless Black Void, because his fur is so very black, but this picture does a pretty good job of showing his silhouette.  A Black Void in Silhouette is much more demonstrative than a Shapeless Black Void, don't you think?

Anyway, I'm sorry to report that Pedro's efforts were largely for nothing, as he was unable to find any signs that Sleepyhead's persistent somnolence is the result of a medical condition; in fact, Pedro pronounced himself completely baffled.  His recommendation is that Sleepyhead consult a psychiatrist.  Sleepyhead, who seems perfectly satisfied with his life, is rather unlikely to do so of his own accord; but Alfredo has been lobbying for an on-site mental health professional, so if his campaign is successful, Pedro might get his way.

A Tutor

AJD just got back from visiting his old college roommates DS and L-AS, who recently welcomed their first child, JKS.  DS was the other half of the creative team behind the puzzle featuring some of my menagerie in the 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt, and so of course when the Wild Republic learned that he had a new baby daughter, they concluded that they ought to send her a tutor.  The tutor they chose is an owl named Archimedes; he naturally has the highest of credentials and is eminently qualified to tutor young humans.  Owls make the best tutors anyway, you know.

By fortunate coincidence, Archimedes and AJD ended up travelling together.  See, Archimedes is actually an old pupil of Twilby's; his mother is from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, so he did a lot of his schooling over there.  When he received his new assignment, he decided to stop by for a visit with his old teacher, and Twilby was only too happy for a chance to catch up with one of his favourite former pupils.

Archimedes hung out with the local chapter for a couple of weeks, and then he and AJD left on their epic road trip.   AJD had a conference to attend in London (Canada, not England) first, and although Archimedes is not a dialectologist, he's a generally intellectually curious chap and was more than happy to check things out.  Then it was off to the S household, where Archimedes met his new pupil for the first time.

She looks pretty intrigued, doesn't she?  I bet she's realised that her new tutor is big enough that he could probably fly her around her room if due care were taken.  Sort of stork-fashion, you know.  

I'd like to know what she's thinking in the second picture. She looks like she's mulling something over.  Maybe Archimedes has asked her a question?