It was a dark and stormy night.
The woodchuck sat back and contemplated her opening line. A classic thriller deserved a non-traditional, original approach, and she felt weather really set the scene.
She was not new to writing—she had already finished her life story and in her opinion, it was a best seller. Sort of like A Million Little Pieces, only with groundhogs and truth. But countless posts on agent Twitter warned her that a debut memoir was the hardest manuscript to sell; so she set aside the three volume, 400,000 word tome it had taken her three soul-sucking weeks to complete and concentrated instead on being the next Stephen King. How hard could it be to write something like Cujo? She knew a lot about angry animals, being one herself.
She wished it really were dark and stormy, because maybe that would shut up the damn cicadas. The woodchuck had nothing against the bugs; in fact, she was quite fond of them, especially if they were served with a nice red and some quality EVOO. She understood they were excited about coming above ground and having sex (easier than coming below ground, she chortled to herself) but honestly, did they have to constantly scream about it? There had been some gossip about a fungus that caused the cicada genitals to fall off and turn them into zombies, which sounded like a perfect plot for her horror story.
Her cousin Shirley had been flipping through the woodchuck’s memoir looking for references to herself, but now she said, “Why are you still writing about cicadas? Now that that the two broods are gone, no one cares.”
The woodchuck looked around her burrow where the floor was littered with cicada exoskeleton like so many peanut shells at a Ground Round. “I just had some for lunch!”
“Yes, but those are the regular ones that come at the end of summer. The zombies are gone—you’re behind the trend.”
The woodchuck sighed and deleted the first line. It was so hard to stay current; the news moved around as fast as an infected cicada whose junk had just fallen off.
“Why don’t you write about something important that affects us all?” Shirley nagged. “There is a huge election coming up in November. Haven’t you been watching the convention?”
“Is it time to go through that whole get out the vole thing again?” complained the woodchuck. “Didn’t we already do that?” The woodchuck was known for being blind not because she couldn’t see, but because she tended to focus only on things that interested her, such as writing a best seller or the new season of Love is Blind UK (thank god for closed captioning because she couldn’t understand a word they were saying).
“It’s Get Out the VOTE, you idiot; the voles have nothing to do with it. Although I heard they might be switching to Harris now that RFK, Jr. has dropped out. They loved the whole brain worm thing until they realized he wasn’t giving them away.”
“Is he the one who was into dolphin porn?” The woodchuck wasn’t completely out of touch; she had spent hours researching that topic when it first started trending. She made a mental note to delete her search history in case Shirley borrowed her computer.
“No, that guy is running for VP with the weasel who has the fox tail stapled to his head.”
“Wait, is he the one they call a heterosectional because he likes to . . .”
“I knew you were paying attention!” interrupted Shirley. “Why do you pretend this isn’t important? You always make jokes!”
Shirley finally left, nagging about the responsibility of voting and patriotism and how much she hated bald eagles. Finally alone, the woodchuck pulled out a shirt she had owned for years, the one with the slogan on it that was close to her heart. The knot of tension she had been carrying around in her stomach for weeks had finally lessened, but she couldn’t admit that to Shirley. The fear of the weasel had been waking her up in the middle of the night for months now, and it was easier to focus on jokes than admit how scary the whole situation was. Soon it would be time to hibernate, and she had hoped to sleep through the election.
Except maybe not? If she could stay awake for the next 72 days, perhaps she could help.
She could give the public what they needed to be inspired the way she had been by all those balloons. She would write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told—a political thriller involving weasels who turn into zombies, with lots and lots of dolphin sex. In between the fish porn and the brain worm mystery would be a well-thought out list of a couple thousand reasons why electing these animals was a bad idea. She was thinking of calling it Project 2025.
She pulled the shirt over her head and the slogan Mind Your Own Damn Business stretched across her belly. Words to live by, indeed. A cicada fell out of the fold of her neck, and she popped it into her mouth. She wondered if they had caffeine in them. She was going to need it.
Shirley says: “Be sure to check your registration to make sure no one has purged you from the voting rolls!” And get out the vole!
theblindwoodchuck.com 