The Big Kerfuffle Part Two

The Big Kerfuffle

Part Two

Emma’s nose wrinkled as the smell of shit filled her nostrils. She highly suspected that one of the library’s occupants, some ill trained child, was the culprit.

She glanced around, making sure that no one was watching. She had worn a rather risqué dress that day and it revealed a little more of her décolletage than she was comfortable exposing, especially when she bent over.

Had the smell not been so powerful she may have tried to make it to the washroom. She threw caution to the wind, grabbed a tissue and bent over to examine the sole of her shoe.

Sure enough, shit. Not just any old shit, but really stinky stuff.

Emma wasn’t an expert in identifying feces, but she knew instinctively that it wasn’t a human product. She was puzzled as to what animal had produced the aromatic droppings.

As she was carefully examining the evidence, doing her best to restrain her exuberant breasts, she was horrified to see a pair of black, well shined shoes directly in front of her.

She slowly glanced upwards to find a rather somber taciturn man glaring down at her. It was her branch manager and he did not look happy.

He glanced around surveying the lay of the land, saw the library was still empty of patrons and sternly said, “Emma, please come to my office.”

“And make sure that your shoes are clean.”

Emma cringed. She had no idea of how she was going to explain the mess on the floor.

They proceeded to his rather posh private office where he began by pulling out a file from his desk.

As he leafed through the papers, he made checkmarks here and there sometimes frowning, sometimes simply closing his eyes and breathing out heavily.

” Miss Jones, he began, I realize that you were not here when the last librarian almost had our branch shut down.”

”Her attempts to deal with a certain situation somehow escalated into a freak show that shocked our city.”

Emma did her best to put on a serious face. She very much enjoyed this job and was determined to do her best to make sure that she kept it.

She did remember the event her manager was describing. She had only graduated recently and was looking for a job in a prestigious library in the city.

Emma had decided that this was the branch she would like to work at. She was on her way to make out an application when the library doors erupted and a very angry woman stormed out. This woman was cursing and swearing and threatening to come back with a lawyer to sue whoever she could, and make life as miserable for them all as she was possibly capable of doing.

This woman was the head librarian and along with her dismissal charges, was a whole other stack of papers. The woman, blind with rage, almost knocked Emma to the ground. She paused, momentarily, gathered her senses, apologized to Emma and thrust all the papers into her hands.

Before Emma could question as to what these were about, the woman had stormed down the sidewalk and disappeared into the midst of a gathering crowd.

Emma found a clean spot on the stone steps, gathered her composure and slowly began to read the below story.

THE BIG KERFUFFLE

A WORK OF FICTION

She closed the heavy front doors of the old library and sighed with relief.

It had been a busy day for the librarian, she was tired, a little cranky and ready to go home for some R&R.

Her day had been filled with noisy children, riff raff off the street using the library as their personal office space, people with lame excuses as to why they weren’t able to return a book and worst of all - a dreaded BOARDROOM MEETING that seemed to last for hours and hours. The most frustrating part of the meeting was that little had been resolved and she knew that the next day more than likely was to be a repeat of the one just done.

She was exhausted. Thankfully, the act of setting the alarm system, closing the doors and turning the key gave her the space to begin putting the day behind her. Her spa bath and a special bottle from her fridge called to her and as she headed to the bus stop, thoughts of the library quickly melted away.

Meanwhile, behind the closed library door, things were brewing - literally.

The civets and a small troop of monkeys were in the staff kitchen debating about the best coffee. The civets insisted it was Kopi Luwak. The monkeys, who liked to stir up trouble, began throwing their poop around - it started to get quite stinky in the room. The civets were not impressed, insisting that their ‘poop coffee’ was by far the most superior.

Up on the fourth floor a flock of sheep were becoming nervous. Perhaps the arguing in the coffee room was making them uneasy. It might also have been the stench of feces being flung about that room three floors below.

They decided to take the escalator down to the first floor to check out the situation but got quite agitated when a fluffle of rabbits from the third floor tried to sneak on beneath their feet. The situation became even more dangerous as a risk of lobsters began using their claws as a way to get to the front of the line.

All hell broke loose as the herons began to siege, and nests of locusts swarmed in dark clouds, circling the crowds doing their best to be first onto the escalator

Darkness and chaos deepened. Likely the lemurs, sneakily spreading conspiracy stories, only made matters worse.

There were armies of frogs, quivers of cobras, clowders of ocelots, consortiums of octopus, passels of opossum and - bears. Their sleuthing about, investigating the situation became more than problematic, mostly because they were getting hungry.

So you can begin to imagine the situation in the library.

Not good.

Thankfully a congress of eagles, assisted by a committee of vultures decided to take charge and settled themselves into the staff boardroom next to the coffee room.

Some order began to prevail, though the vultures were acting more as a wake, due to their departure from perches in trees. They seemed to sense that a few corpses were about to appear and that a fine meal was in the near future.

“Order, order”, screeched the eagles, masterfully plotting the arrangement of this large, very diverse convocation.

“ONE, only one of each of your kind can enter the boardroom.”

“Choose your representative and the rest will have to find other places to wait.”

The animals, most of them quite intelligent and all, extremely well read, knew the routine.

They quickly selected the pride of their packs, the best of the best, shoving pens, papers and other weapons into the hands, claws, hooves, wings, mouths etc. of those chosen to represent them in the meeting.

Pandemonium subsided, the boardroom table took on some degree of order and all the available perches about the room were filled.

“Call to order” cackled the hyena, as she began taking notes.

The cobra quivered. He resisted the urge to curl himself around the obnoxious secretary, taking her breath away.

“Tonight’s agenda includes:

1. How to deal with pesky humans - especially the nasty head librarian

2. How to deal with children who rip pages out of books.

3. Overdue books and more serious consequences for not returning them."

The dove sighed and the wombat with the experience of her wisdom took notes.

The zebra dazzled everyone with a solution to the stern librarian problem.

“Just leave her alone. She’s doing a hard job.”

All agreed.

Now for the children.

Many of the animals began to drool.

“NO, they cannot be eaten,” hissed the cobra, even as he dreamed of curling himself around lithe young bodies.

The whale came to the rescue with a brilliant suggestion: “Let's put them in a school.” Many of the other marine mammals and fishes concurred with this plan and the second item on the agenda was efficiently taken care of.

“Last item. Overdue library books.”

Much consultation ensued, cackling, hissing, mooing and other exasperated sounds rising into the air.

After some time and several votes a solution was unanimously adopted.

“EAT THE CULPRITS”.

All the animals sighed with relief, agreeing that this was a perfect fix to an annoying problem. Many anticipated the meals that were lurking in the shadows.

With no further ado, the group decided to end the meeting, return to their troops and deliver the results of their consultation.

Everyone headed back to their respective floors, selected the shelf they called home and settled in for the night.

Peace reigned supreme in the library.

All was well.

The next morning the librarian returned, unlocked the door, turned off the alarm system and began to prepare for a busy day.

Her evening at home had been most peaceful. She felt a renewed energy, ready to tackle the chores that lay ahead of her.

As she proceeded to her desk, a lone feather drifted down in front of her. It was a beautiful, perfectly rounded feather from the tail of an eagle.

“Hmmm,” she pondered. “I wonder how this got here?”

She failed to notice the one small rabbit turd on the marbled floor as she headed off to work.

She had more important matters to deal with as a group of noisy, rambunctious children burst through the doors. She mentally began planning programs that would keep them occupied and, she hoped, quiet.

As the cacophony of children’s voices filled the quiet void she knew her plans were a lost cause.

She sighed, thought of Kali Ma, the Hindu goddess of time, creation, preservation, and destruction. This mythological woman, consort to Shiva was usually most loving, kind and compassionate. She did however have a few vulnerable spots. One of these weak places was a quick descent into anger and when she lost her temper, would sometimes succumb to an old default pattern. She had the bad habit of eating her children.

Somehow, the librarian knew this was not a viable option and yet - she dreamed!

She settled on grabbing a book about baby bunnies and was surprised to learn that in some regions of the world, a group of rabbits was known as a ‘fluffle’.

“How appropriate,” she mused.

It was a good thing she didn’t look at the bottom of her shoe and find the lone rabbit turd stuck to the heel.

REFERENCE LIST

SOME REGIONAL NAMES FOR GROUPS OF ANIMALS

Bears - sleuth

Cobras - quiver

Eagles - congress

Frogs - army

Herons - siege

Lemurs - conspiracy

Lobsters - risk

Locust - nest/swarms

Ocelots - clowder

Octopus - consortium

Opossum - passel

Rabbits - fluffle

Sheep - flock

Vultures - committee (when perched in trees/ wake when on the ground)

Wombat - wisdom

Zebra - dazzle

************

Emma sat in silence as she gathered the papers neatly.

Her dilemma deepened as she considered her choices.

Keep the story.

Chuck the papers in the garbage.

She sighed, looked around carefully as she put the story in…

Perhaps there shall come a third part to this silly saga!