SERIALIZATION OF “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” – Chapter 37 of 61
Warble Proposes Globe-Spanning Nude Hiking and Starts a Date Fight
“And how would such a thing come about?” Marianne asks, not seeing the connection between the IDL and a hostile takeover of the world by Arabs or anybody else.
“Elementary, my dear Ms. Trench. As everybody knows, you are what you eat. So, when the A-rabs complete this vertical swath of date palms circumnavigating the globe, all in the vicinity will begin eating dates. This we must circumvent, for when they ingest these dates, they will take on the customs, culture, perspective, groupthink, and worldview of the A-rabs.”
“You don't say,” Ward says, his tone veritably dripping with sarcasm.
“Wake up, Robespierre, and pay attention!” Warble urgently urges. “Yes, I did say so, and you might be worth more than a mangy dead rabbit if you'd get with the program, listen up, pay attention, and snap to it!” he snaps, snapping his fingers.
Ward considers giving up his post, but doesn't know how to get home from here—and besides, even if he did, it would still be 1492, and he doesn't want to sail the ocean blue just to finally arrive home exhausted and find redskins poking around his domicile.
“So we have to nip their plans of inundating the world with dates in the butt,” Warble explains. “We will fool those fools by replacing their date palms with fig-mulberry trees, the most benevolent and beloved tree of arborists everywhere.”
“And why figs for dates, Warble? What is their specific advantage, I mean?” ventures Marianne.
“That's for me to know and you all to find out—right now: by replacing the IDL with the IFL (International Fig Line) we'll secure freedom for the people,” Warble answers. “Figs for Freedom?” Jacques inquires.
“You've got it, LaRue,” Warble nods. “With the International Fig Line in place, people can walk around the world naked as a jay bird—or really any species of bird, as none of them are inclined to don clothing, except of course for their plumage--feeling free and easy, light and airy, comfortable and carefree.”
“Walking around naked? In public?!” Mary asks, eyes wide and involuntarily covering herself with her hands (although she is, of course, fully clothed).
“Sure, why not?” Warble replies nonchalantly. “If you happen to meet someone on the road, you simply reach over, snap off a fig leaf (or two or three, depending on your size and gender), and thus provide yourself with a modicum of modesty (all that custom really calls for, at that point).”
“And think of the health benefits!” Jacques interjects, getting into the spirit of the idea.
“That's right, LaRue,” Warble agrees. “Many people will walk all the way around the world, stirring their stumps like nobody's business...which, of course, is beneficial to one's circulation, skin tone, regularity, and general state of mind.”
“Exactly,” concurs Jacques, surprised that Warble actually got something right for once.
“And that's not all, my slow-witted-but-finally-getting-the-point fellow travelers,” Warble goes on. “By walking over and under the horizon (depending on their direction of travel, and doing both if they make a round trip of it), they will expand their figurative (no pun intended) horizons by coming into contact with people from all different countries and cultures. Thus, one person at a time, the IFL will bring about world peace—for who wants to drop a bomb, or napalm for that matter, on a friend of mine?”
“Hey, Warble, you sort of rhymed!” Mary notes.
“Mary,” Warble answers, “haven't you noticed by now that I always speak in the purest strains of majestic, divine, sublime poetry? Why, if you could see my words floating about in the air, like so many dancing lepidoptera, they would bear an uncanny resemblance to that incomparable dancing duo Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali.”
“Well...” Mary begins to hesitantly respond.
“That's a deep subject for such a shallow mind,” Warble cuts her off. “And something else y'all didn't think of: What to do with the dead date trees after we chop them all down?
“Well, it's Consumer Warble to the rescue again,” Warble answers his own question.
“I've got it all figured out (no pun intended) perfectly and precisely: We'll load them onto slow barges (the shipping costs less that way), and send them to the Saar Chasm.”
“The sarcasm?” Ward wonders, looking like a paragon of perplexity.
“Don't you know anything, Robespierre?” Warble answers, sighing. “The Saar Chasm is a giant crevasse in Germany. It makes our Grand Canyon look like a gopher hole by way of comparison. We can throw all those date trees and their foliage and brush into the Saar Chasm without even making a dent in it, so to speak. It's the biggest land fill on earth.
“And to top it all off,” Warble adds, “the figs that will replace the dates here on the IFL can be used for medicinal purposes, too. They make an excellent poultice. You just squish a fig open and smear its innards all over the affected area. Here, I'll show you,” Warble says, grabbing a fig from an inner pocket of his vest.
“Let's say you get stung in the face by a tse-tse fly and you are afraid of infection. You would grab a fig, squish it, and spread the fig filling (pretty much the same stuff they inject into Fig Newtons, buy the whey) all over your mug.
“Like this:” Warble says, squishing the fig in his hand and smearing the gooey paste all over Ward's face.
Ward doesn't especially appreciate being the recipient of 'Dr. Warble's Miracle Fig Paste' and flails his arms about for a bit, spluttering and stuttering. Ward finally finds his tongue (while wiping off his mouth): “You can also use the hanging harvest as 'ammo' when you want to bean (or 'fruit') your fellow travelers,” Ward says, running to the nearest date palm, quickly harvesting a handful of its overripe cargo, and chucking them at Warble, who deftly ducks out of the way of the barrage.
Mary, who is standing behind Warble (Mary is a big fan of Tammy Wynette and takes literally her musical exhortation to 'Stand By Your Man'), bears the brunt of the date onslaught.
Soundtrack note: An apology to those who don't appreciate traditional country music, but what else could we do but play “Stand By Your Man” by either Tammy Wynette or Me First and the Gimme Gimmes at this juncture?
Warble sees the look on Mary's face and determines it would be a good time for a little 'team-building' exercise.
“Date fight! Date fight!” Warble yells playfully, prancing over to one of the trees. The rest of the gang join in the merriment, and a free-for-all date-chucking mêlée ensues.
Before one can spit and holler howdy, the whole area looks like an earthquake had struck or that a child's party had taken place there.
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” is being serialized in this space each Sunday and Thursday; it is also available in its entirety from here.
You can listen to the recording of this excerpt, by the author’s alter ego, here: