Tag: Election

Reality Bites

The woodchuck sat terrified in her burrow. Only her snout and beady black eyes were visible as she sank deeper into the plastic bag stuffed with random bird feathers that was the warmest thing she owned. Outside, above her, a fire raged. It was fueled, not by flames, but by anger and hate and animals who seemed to be voting against their own interests; she’d heard all the chickens had bonded together to elect the weasel. Why you would vote for the beast that regularly took out entire coops was beyond her, but one of them had told her “they just didn’t know what the weasel’s opponent stood for.”  

The woodchuck did not engage with fowl because she knew you can’t change people’s mind by arguing with them, although it never stopped her cousin from trying. Shirley was on her way over to the woodchuck’s burrow, her own plastic bag packed with essentials. She had a plan; they would cross the border to the next meadow to escape whatever terrible things the weasel had in mind for their own beloved field.

The woodchuck knew people saw her as a narcissistic cynic; always looking out for herself and not concerned for the other animals. But they didn’t know about her concealed vein of naivete and optimism. She had never really believed the weasel would come back to their meadow because she couldn’t fathom that the other animals would vote against themselves. Sure, everything cost more since the big sick had locked down the meadow, but wasn’t that the fault of the big corporations? What did they think the weasel was actually going to do about that, since he planned on trying to repeal minimum wage and get the eagles to take out all his enemies?

Shirley ducked into the burrow, dragging two huge bags of sticks behind her. “What are you bringing?” snapped the woodchuck. “I thought we were traveling light.”

“I needed all my favorite sticks to remember this place by,” Shirley said in a quivering voice. “I love this meadow.” Tears ran down her snout and she was suddenly sobbing as hard as Hannah had on Love is Blind when Leo broke up with her. 

The woodchuck was not an affectionate animal, but watching her cousin cry broke something in her. She wrapped her tiny arms around her bulky best friend in a hug as big as she could give, and the two of them stood there for a long time.

“Shirley,” she said softly. “We can’t leave.” Shirley was still sobbing hysterically, and the gentler side that the woodchuck never showed ran out of patience. “SHIRLEY!” she shouted, slapping her relative across the snout. “I know you’re sad and scared and anxious —so am I. But we can’t leave. We are the elders in the meadow here and we have to stay and show them we will not be cowed. We have to keep fighting for all the things we believe in and letting them know just because we lost, we will not bend to their will. We will not vanish without a fight. We’re going to live on. We’re going to survive.”

She wasn’t exactly sure how they were going to do any of that and she realized that some of that pep talk might have been stolen from the president’s speech in Independence Day, but it did the trick. Shirley took a deep breath and the tears slowed. 

“My God,” she whispered. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but you’re right. We have to stay and let the other animals know we can still all band together and keep trying.” She hugged her cousin and said she was going home to put all her sticks back where they belonged.

After she left, the woodchuck stood in silence in her burrow. She wasn’t sure she really believed all that stuff she had just said to Shirley, but at least her cousin had stopped crying. That was something, right? Taking care of each other.

She had found an old string of twinkle lights at the dump, and they worked fine after she replaced the fuse. She strung them from twigs across her burrow, and it made a comforting glow in the cozy tunnel. Today she would rest, and nap; maybe even break into that stash of Snickers bars she had been hoarding since Halloween. She thought about postponing hibernation but changed her mind; after a long sleep through the winter, she would wake refreshed in the spring and ready to do something. She wasn’t sure what that might be, but it would sure be something.

There was only one good thing about all this being over—at least she wouldn’t be getting any more emails and texts from the Democrats wanting more money.

As a form of self-care, I am putting up my Christmas decorations early. They make me happy, and I could sure use some happy right now.

Present: Tense

The anxiety was unbearable, like when hundreds of bees had burrowed into her fur and were all screaming at her at once because she ate their queen. (She didn’t mean to eat their ruler; it was just that all bees looked alike.) Every moment felt like hours, and the cacophony of who said what felt like it was at full volume. The rabbits in the meadow kept chanting, “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” like it was a hilarious joke, not realizing that they could be next in the food chain. It felt like everyone had lost their damn minds.

Her cousin Shirley dropped by unexpectedly to recruit her to be a poll watcher. The woodchuck assumed that meant the polecats were going to be putting on another show, but watching those skinny little freaks dance made her feel bad about her thighs and she had enough things to worry about.

When was this madness going to be over? The animals in the forest were constantly going on about who they thought should run the woods, and every species seem to have a different idea of who was the scariest. Anxious chatter filled the skies from the bluebirds and the redbirds seemed to be completely divorced from reality, and now the muskrat was offering to pay people to vote for the weasel. The woodchuck felt that was extremely unfair, because no one on her side of the meadow was doing anything like that and she could use some extra cash. She didn’t really know what she would do with money, but she did love to win things. Also, how was that not illegal? She hoped the meerkat named Garland was looking into this.

She needed to distract herself, because if she saw one more clip of that weasel dancing to YMCA, she was going to gnaw off the paw holding her phone. 

She tried watching Netflix, but the thing kept buffering and freezing. Reception in her burrow was never great, and it could always be counted on to go out just when you finally managed to lose yourself in the latest episode of Love is Blind, where the people were all terrible and no one talked about Arnold Palmer’s dick. She lay on her back in the dark, watching that little circle go endlessly around and around but never quite completing itself, not unlike this election cycle. She tried not to think about the reports that the polls were tightening, because she knew that had nothing to do with the stripping ferrets, or the fact that Pennsylvania —home of Punxsutawney, where she had faithfully predicted the weather for all those Groundhog Days!—might let her down. 

Her head was going to explode if she kept thinking about this. How was she going to get through the next fourteen days? What she needed was a sure-fire distraction, a completely reliable streaming service that worked in a dark burrow and would provide enough mind numbing content to refocus her brain and force her amygdala to process only big-lipped housewives, badly-behaved yacht crews, and whatever Alan Cummings was wearing.

The woodchuck sat up, suddenly clearheaded. This was a great idea! Finally, a project that would focus her mind and keep her from endless checking her phone for updates on whether the former leader Bushy the Squirrel had endorsed someone. The woodchuck started sketching a logo for this new app and realized she should immediately apply for a patent before someone else could grab her concept. She would call it — TunnelVision!

Unfortunately, when the woodchuck applied for the trademark, she discovered that someone else had already patented the idea. It was called Bravo TV. 

It was going to be a long two weeks.

Fourteen days to go. If anxiety and nerves could power vehicles, we would never again need to drill, baby, drill.

They Call Him Flipper, Flipper . . .

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!

Electile dysfunction

The woodchuck looked at the queuing menagerie and contemplated screaming. How hard was it to dip your paw in ink and blot it next to a picture of who you thought should run the forest? Every single animal had a question or couldn’t remember what precinct their burrow was in or had a conspiracy theory they wanted to argue about; she had no idea voting was going to be so loud.

When her cousin Shirley had asked her if she wanted to be an election judge, she hadn’t been listening closely (which was always the best way to have a conversation with Shirley). Hearing the word “judge”, she had somehow taken that to mean that she was going to be on Judge Judy’s show; she relished the idea of testifying against all the animals she felt had wronged her. Unfortunately, now she was surrounded by all those same crazed creatures trying to “make their voices heard”. She was trying to stay impartial, but honestly, did anyone really want to hear what the possums had to say?

She looked around, bewildered, at the various pieces of technology as someone shouted at her that there was a mealy worm gumming up the ballot scanner and she needed to stick her paw in there to dislodge it. She couldn’t get the printer to work in her own burrow—why had anyone trusted her with this stuff?

The woodchuck hadn’t planned on voting in this election. She had decided to go into early hibernation and hoped to sleep through the whole thing. But the meadow and the forest had strange vibes about them lately, with the Foxes whispering stories about how the election was fixed before it even took place. They had brought in animals from other places to watch the polecats who were trying to keep order; there was a chameleon outside the voting area changing from camouflage to hot pink and then back again, which she guessed was supposed to be intimidating but just made her giggle. You could tell they weren’t from around here because the temperature had dropped last night and all the lizards sleeping in trees had frozen and fallen to the ground. They had thawed out by morning and gone back to the line to stick their tongues out at the waiting voters.

The big Muskrat who owned the river had stirred up all the birds and now the chattering about how they communicated with each other had become deafening, threatening to drown out what was actually at stake. The woodchuck wasn’t completely sure what Democracy was, but if it meant that she would never again have to listen to that semiaquatic water rodent try to ratsplain electric vehicles to her, she would be happy to vote for it.

Shirley had tried to explain to the woodchuck how important the issues were, but the roaring in her ears drowned out her cousin’s voice. Everything felt like it was on the verge of collapse. It was confusing and scary and she had to keep resisting the urge to go to sleep—she had never met an ostrich, but she envied their ability to stick their heads in the sand. Around the meadow, she was still known as the blind woodchuck, after her faux paw of staring directly into the sun during an eclipse; but also for her habit of willfully denying what was happening around her. She knew now, on this November 8th, that she had to reject that nickname and take off her sunglasses.

She gulped down a few stinkbugs for the caffeine hit, and handed out another ballot.

The Blind Woodchuck may have a brain the size of a pea, but even she understands how important it is to vote!