Intoxicated Pachyderms

Picture a herd of elephants. Drunken elephants. They are all heading in roughly the same direction, although it’s unclear if they have a destination in mind. Being drunk, they aren’t very efficient about moving forward, and often swerve towards one another and make course corrections with no apparent purpose. Occasionally, one will decide to take a break and head directly to the left or right of the path, often from the other side of the herd.

Our protagonist is a cat, perhaps a panther. He is trying to get to a point in the distance that the herd is stumbling towards. Heading in the same direction, he isn’t fighting the stream, but is required to call upon his feline agility with sudden speed and direction changes merely to avoid being stepped on. Drunken elephants, as you can imagine, are not very aware of a cat in their midst, and are usually unable to overcome their momentum by the time the realize they are about to squash him.

This is what driving a roadster in West St. Louis County feels like.

I posted this in July 2003 during week 1531.

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