Randiddle, 3

Randiddles
by J. Ingram

Tuesday's Randiddle: cigarette, fungus, quadruped
(Oh, God... really, random dictionary?!)

Rudolph tossed head and the others pressed in, to form a tight circle.  Their antlers even knit in places like a barbed wire fence.  Anything, to prevent Blitzen getting back out.

"It's just... fungus, you guys." Blitzen flared his nostrils.  White muzzle drifted toward the ground.  "You know, the tasty stuff we're always eating in the summers?"

"Burning, smoking fungus?" Rudolph strayed a long ear. 

"Would you believe a cigarette?"

Donner had enough then, and lashed leg out to knock the rolled, whatever it was, from Blitzen's mouth.  They may have been quadrupeds, but they weren't stupid.  Each ungulate spoke about how important it was to be nice and not naughty, what of Blitzen's holiday presents at the end of the year?  What about his concerned family members?

"And not to mention that you are participating in something of a global, at least international web of crime that breeds terror and thrives on the destruction of people and their communities!"

Yes, they were very, very, very good reindeer.  Even when off-season.

"Geez, you guys.  One day, they're gonna legalize it, and all of you will become wrong." Blitzen said and rolled his eyes.

"Let's not talk about what may or may not happen in Washington, DC right now, you guys.  Blitzen knows we all watch CNN, and he's just trying to distract us from the real issue here." Rudolph straightened up, after he let the dry, windy chill of the North Pole settle in for enough hollow, dramatic silence. "Blitzen, you are not a sick deer in need of any kind of medication.  You are a deer with a problem.  All of our trial runs this week have failed.  We'll be crashing into houses and flinging Santa clear across neighborhoods, Wards even, in December at this rate.  Suppose there's another snowmageddon?  We need every deer here hale and alert.  Second, we have a problem with you always being hungry--"

"And stealing more than your share of the feed." Cupid interrupted.

The whites of Rudolph's eyes bulged with still more unceasing passion, "You are late for everything and we are tired of seeing you abuse this and practically everything else around here!  This is an intervention.  You are finally going to get help.  Now, the elves are already on their way with plenty water troughs, a bunch of taped afterschool specials from the eighties, and sedatives in case you get tricky and want to fly over our heads again.  You will also kindly observe, Blitzen, that we are not tethered together at the moment."

Several other reindeer sporting bandages and bruises on their flanks hastily agreed.

Blitzen stepped forward, flicked tail once, then glared.  "I just love TV from the eighties and early nineties, especially that one episode of Saved by the Bell with Jessie doing smack.  Oh, and by the way--sedatives?  What's next, you gonna throw Miss Merril's Marvelous Blue Ridge Moon Shine, Preakness gambling slips and hookers my way?  You guys really have no idea how deep I'm in, do you?"

The toyshop elves arrived then.  Blitzen's brazen brakeless bent on obliteration bawled them some real tiny tears.

...

Another gem thanks to three words from the Webster's New World Pocket Dictionary and some random page-flipping on my part.  Go on and send/comment me some mo' words folkses!  Oh, and I didn't invent the bit about Washington DC's recent City Council decision, either:  http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2010/05/council_approves_medical_marij.html

(Randitty-O-Meter: 10, Weren't expecting an off-season tale of quadrupedal debauchery, were you?  I really wasn't, either, which scares me even more.)