CHAPTER 48
Once all of us animals had been reduced to fingernail size, the Zenia Zephyr and the Fast Forward & Back were started up by their respective pilots, namely Albert Spartacus Joad and “Eco Defender Warble” McGorkle (Albert was also an Eco Defender, but did not apply that nickname to himself).
The engines of the time & space travel vehicles hummed to life in unison (they don’t roar to life because they are electric; Rory and his fellow Lions did roar a little, though, in expression of their exuberance and exultation as well as expectation of jubilation on the horizon).
Warble loved the sound of the two engines in stereo. “It’s poetry in motion!” he cried out (rather illogically, actually), and set the destination to Five Dunes, Botswana.
Albert smiled, shook his head (still finding the dramatic change in Warble difficult to wrap his brain around), and entered the same destination in the Zephyr. The date, 1885, remained the same as it had been for both vehicles.
The two vehicles flew in tandem, remaining practically wingtip-to-wingtip the whole way.
Just to make conversation during the trip, and to try to get a bead on how she was feeling, I turned around in my seat and asked the Orange Tabby, “How did you enjoy your coaching experience with the Leopards and Cheetahs and Tigers, Marmalade?"
“I liked it all except the algebra and the constant dodging,” she replied. “The algebra hurt my head, and the constant dodging out of the way of the Cheetahs made my feet sore.” She then spread out her toes as wide as she could and began licking between them assiduously.
It looked like this self-grooming or self-medicating was going to go on for quite some time, so I turned back around and resumed my conversation with Rovette.
As we entered the Kalahari desert and saw Lions, Giraffes, Wildebeests, Cheetahs, and many other animals below us, we descended as far as we dared (just above the tops of the highest sand dunes) and we animals yelled out to our brethren to follow us: “Five Dunes: Be there or be square!”
Chumbawumba continued to trumpet this message forth, wanting as many representatives of Animaldom as possible to be on hand to see him and his sister and all the other crew members “show the poachers a thing or two.”
Without understanding why she was doing it, Terri screeched out, “After a while, Crocodile!” as she saw a float of Crocodylinae basking on the shore of a lake near Gwaraha.
We animals were in high spirits when we landed at Five Dunes that night. Thinking of the excitement that would accompany the dawn of the next day, we found it hard to go to sleep that night.
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