Instalment One Hundred and Forty Three

We all knew to be on the lookout for the wolf in sheep’s clothing, a nice pair of khaki slacks and a polo shirt that one sheep used to wear to impress dates, but none of us knew to also be wary about the coyote in a clown-suit roaming the meadow.

We all thought it was a regular clown.

“Great, a clown,” we sarcastically remarked when we saw him.

Someone said that clowns scare them, because it’s a conversational shorthand for “the inevitability of death frightens me and I need a connection, however fleeting, to survive the day,” and sometimes we need a little help keeping the wolf from the door.

Now coyotes are natural mischief-makers but the coyote in a clown-suit, he was something else. He was spotted going through the bins, which should have tipped us off about him being a coyote, but immediately he started transforming rubbish into poodles and giraffes for the lambs and kids, so we let it go.

“Clowns scare the willies outta me,” I muttered. “That’s called Coulrophobia,” said a well-dressed sheep with a wolfish grin sidling up to me, “Say that’s a fine wool suit, how’s about I buy you a drink?”

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Two

He was a regular guy. He was a large guy but he was regular guy.  Everyone said so. “Just a regular large guy,” they all said, “but.” We all have a but but his but was very large. His large but was his small face. His head wasn’t too big, his head fit his body and his body was large, so his head was large too but his head was not too large. His large regular head fit alright on his regular large body. He was a regular large guy but his face was too small. Everything about his face was alright but the size of his face was not at all right at all. It was as if someone drew a perfectly alright nose, eyes and mouth but drew a far too large circle around it all. Only the circle that was his head was not too big, the circle was large, large enough to fit just right on the body which was large and regular but the face did not fit alright at all into the circle of his regular large head. You could circle around the problem all day but his large but was a small face.