There Is No Rod
by "The Enduring Man-Child"
All standard disclaimers apply.
Foxglove sighed as she looked out over the park. The sun was going down, the park lights had switched on, and moths and other scrumptious nighttime insects were beginning to stir. On most evenings at this time she would be enjoying a repast the likes of which any bat would appreciate. Not this evening, however. This evening she hung from a twig and stared out at it all with an expression of sadness that belied the good things in her life.
Dale scurried up the tree after a late acorn raid. Ordinarily Foxglove would respond to the red-nosed chipmunk's appearance with a cry of delight and a display of enthusiastic affection. But although she certainly heard him (not much escaped those ears) she made no move. She continued to stare at the moths gathering beneath the lights in ever greater numbers, sighing as though something near and dear had left her bereft and alone.
At first Dale did not notice her. He assumed she would be flying about taking her nightly meal. But he heard a slight sound and looked up in surprise to see her there—surprised not only by her being there but also by the sadness expressed on her face and in her sigh.
"Whatcha doin' out here, Foxy?" he asked, his concern failing to mute his always happy and optimistic tone.
He became even more concerned when she did not respond. He was well aware that she must have heard him. He began to wonder if something were terribly wrong.
"Foxglove, you alright?" he asked a little more loudly, positioning himself immediately beneath the twig from which she was hanging.
"Huh? Oh, hi Cute Stuff! I'm sorry. I guess I didn't hear you."
"Foxy, are you all right?" he asked, climbing up to a point even with her face. "I mean, nothin' bad's happened, has it? You sick or somethin'?"
Foxglove immediately brightened to her usual cheerful self. "Oh no, Cutie. Everything's fine."
Dale closed one eye and rubbed his cheek as he engaged in an activity which he didn't often indulge in—deep thought.
"Then why are you just hangin' up here? Why aren't you out eating?"
"Oh . . . it's nothing, really. Just a little sad about something," she admitted, some of her former melancholy creeping back into her soft voice.
"Oh, don't be sad! Hey, maybe I can cheer you up! What did the rockin' chair say to the barbed wire fence?"
Foxglove turned her attention to the ever-happy chipmunk. She was going to say she had absolutely no idea what a rocking chair would say to a barbed wire fence or even how a rocking chair would find itself in said fence's proximity. She was also of a mind to tell him that she had not the slightest interest in what their conversation might be. But all at once her demeanor brightened considerably. How could it not in the presence of such a person as Dale? That was what she loved about him the most. He was always happy, always sure of himself, and always equally sure that everything could be worked out or solved by a good joke. She let go her perch and fluttered over to him, sitting beside him on the limb, wrapped her wing around him and gave him the kiss she always bestowed on him when either had returned from somewhere else—the one he ordinarily would have received already.
"Oh Dale," she said after finishing the kiss, "what would I do without you? What did I do to deserve you?"
"Just lucky, I guess!" It was an automatic response, one he had given without thinking, but once it had been uttered Foxglove reacted momentarily by laughing, in which Dale soon joined her. She couldn't stay unhappy when he was around, especially when her reasons had been so silly and childish.
Speaking of which . . .
"So, why were you just sittin' out here this evening, Foxy?" he asked after the brief lacuna of silent affection that succeeded their laughter.
"It . . . it was nothing, Dale. I was just being silly, that's all," she answered.
"Aw, c'mon now! You're not foolin' me! You're down about somethin' and I wanna know what it is! So why don'tcha tell me already? You know you want to!" And he finished by wiggling his eyebrows in a most alluring and irresistible fashion.
"Tell you what," she said after turning the matter over in her head for a moment, "let's go inside and . . . and then I'll tell you."
"Deal!" he responded happily, grasping her wing in an enthusiastic handshake—a handshake that elicited more giggling from her—and then she grasped him and fluttered down with him from their perch to the main branch on which the doorway to Rescue Ranger Headquarters was located.
They found the living room empty and quiet. Gadget was in her workshop, Monty and Zipper in the kitchen (whipping up more cheese-themed delicacies at that very moment), and Chip had retired to his bedroom early with his beloved Sureluck Jones compendium. Foxglove seemed to become reticent again, but Dale took her wing and led her to the couch, where he sat facing her and gave her more encouragement.
"Okay, Foxy," he said sympathetically, "why don't you tell me what this is all about?"
Foxglove blushed and looked down, then took another look at Dale's face. He wasn't prodding her; while he certainly was insistent he seemed to be willing to give her all the time she needed.
"Well . . . all right. I'll tell you," she said at last. Dale smiled at this but said nothing. He was going to let her tell this in her own way and at her own pace.
"Well . . . " she began, "some time ago Gadget told me about this really interesting discovery she'd made on the Internet. It seems that there were people—humans—who claimed to have discovered some sort of . . . I don't know . . . creature?"
Dale, already paying the greatest attention, showed a spike of even greater excitement at this word. She knew he would!
"I don't know what else you'd call them," she confessed. "Anyway, it seems that there were these humans who noticed something really strange about the video recordings they'd been making. They saw these . . . things—these beautiful things—flying around in the air."
"Zowie!" Dale exclaimed, "You mean like UFO's???"
"Well, technically, since these things were unidentified and they were flying . . . but they weren't machines. They were something much more mysterious. They seemed to be alive. And they sort of swam through the air, both outdoors and even in people's houses. And they were sort of . . . I don't know . . . you know, like jellyfish? Sort of stretchy and . . . undulating, I believe is the word."
"So they found some sort of jellyfish that live in the air? And they were both outside and inside?"
"Exactly!" she said. "After they were first discovered and word spread around lots of other people started using video cameras to try to see for themselves. And people found them all over the place—inside, outside—and the amazing thing is that while some of them were tiny, others were enormous—longer than airplanes, even!"
Dale's eyes lit up with fascination. "Wow! So if these gigantic flying jelly things are flying around why don't they ever hit a plane?"
"The same reason we can't see them," Foxglove answered, "they fly so much faster than any form of life that we know. I mean, think of it: they share the exact same space as the rest of us, but they move so fast that they might as well live in a different dimension!"
"Yeah! It's like Tales of the Stomach Churning Otherworldly!" Dale observed, his enthusiasm for this topic growing. Then his countenance darkened. "But are they dangerous?"
"Oh, Dale!" Foxglove exclaimed with just a touch of exasperation, "have you ever heard of one hurting anyone?"
"Shoot, I'd never heard of them at all until right now!" he replied.
"Exactly!" she said, "that's the point! These wonderful, mysterious, unknown things have always been with us and we've never even known it! That's what's so wonderful about it!"
"Wonderful?"
"It was one of nature's mysteries, Dale. Here we had been all this time sharing our world with something we didn't even know existed. And not like the Lock Ness Monster or Bigfoot or anything. They were all around us! Sometimes," she added mournfully, "sometimes I liked to think they were even friendly. I could imagine them laughing at us as they flew circles around us, with us moving so slowly that to them we were just standing still! Who knows? Maybe at that speed they could even pass right through us and we'd never even know it."
"Wow!" Dale said, "they do sound wonderful!"
"Gadget showed me some videos of them online," Foxglove said, "and you're right, they were very beautiful."
"So how come Gadget never said anything to the rest of us about these things?" Dale wondered.
"I don't know, Dale," Foxglove said. "She is a little . . . well . . . flighty, you know. Maybe the topic just didn't stick in her mind very long. But it sure stuck in mine."
"And there are videos of these things on the Internet? Where anybody can see 'em?" Dale asked.
"Oh yes. Jut do a search for . . . let's see; what do they call them? Oh yes. 'Rods.' Or 'skyfish.' And something else, too, but I can't think of it right now. 'Solar' something-or-other."
"Zowie!" Dale's face evinced total fascination with this strange new world. "So why were you so sad out there earlier? Did you . . . you didn't discover that they're dangerous, did you??? Oh no! All these centuries of livin' peaceable with us and now they're attackin'! They're gonna take over! They're gonna eat us! YIIIII!!!!!"
Foxglove snapped out of her own dreamy thoughts and shook him by the shoulders (he could get like this sometimes).
"Dale, come to your senses! Why would these things attack anyone if they never had before?"
Dale thought. "Gee, that's a good question, Foxy. But why else would you be so sad about 'em?"
"Because," she began, and a tear trickled from her eye, "because they're not real!" And her countenance assumed its previous sadness.
"Not real?" Dale repeated. Truth be told, he felt cheated. He'd just learned about these fantastic beings and now in a matter of minutes he'd learned they weren't really there.
"Maybe now you can understand," Foxglove resumed somberly, "you see, having grown up all by myself . . . it's just that, I thought I'd found out I'd never really been alone . . . that these wonderful creatures were actually all around me all that time. And even nowadays, sometimes when I was feeding or just flying I'd like to imagine those gigantic, unknown, friendly things up in the sky with me . . . flying a zillion circles around me while I made a single wing flap, maybe circling or spiraling all round me. Maybe I was passing right through them and never knew it! Sharing our world and yet not sharing our world, far too fast to be seen or be detected by sonar, but there nonetheless. I convinced myself they were with me to the point that I took their company for granted. And now it turns out it was all a big mistake."
Dale was trying desperately to figure all this out and drawing a blank. "But if these things are so outside our ever'day senses, then how can anyone say that they're not real? Especially if they've caught 'em on camera?" he wanted to know.
"It was in China," Foxglove answered, "someplace where they'd caught them on camera before . . . some building or other. So they strung up a net and sure enough, the camera showed them flying into the net. And when they looked in the net the next day . . . "
Dale was on the very edge of his seat by this point.
" . . . nothing but bugs. Just plain, ordinary, everyday bugs." And she closed her eyes in a show of resignation that would have wrung tears from a stone.
"Bugs . . . ? But how . . . how . . . " Dale was displaying his own grief by this time, "how in the world would a bug show up as a gigantic undulatin' jellyfish? It don't make any sense!"
"It was just some sort of trick of the light on the camera," Foxglove explained. "Somehow when a bug flies across the room it shows up on a camera lens as that kind of thing. And that's all it was. Because these were them. And they caught 'em. And they were just bugs."
"What about the humongous ones that they said flew around airplanes?" Dale wanted to know.
"Probably just birds. Turns out anything that flies will leave a similar trail on camera. I suppose I would too."
"And you found this out today?"
"Yeah," she said, "I've just had them on my mind lately for some reason and, not being that good with keyboards"—she extended her wings to demonstrate—"I asked Gadget to find the site for me again. And while she was doing the search she found the article that said the whole thing was just a big mistake. No 'rods' . . . or 'skyfish' . . . or 'solar whatever-they-were.'" And when I went out to feed and looked up at the sky . . . it just suddenly seemed so empty. I just couldn't make myself fly feeling like that. Plus the fact that the bugs I'd be eating were the actual things I thought of as my unseen friends. Not a great way to treat friends, is it?" she concluded.
Dale scooted closer to Foxglove and put his arm around her. "I'm so sorry, Foxy," he said, trying his best to comfort her, "but I suppose if they were never really there you really haven't lost anything."
"I know. I know," she said, "but I thought they were there. I thought the sky was full of miracles. And now it just seems so mundane."
Dale hugged Foxglove to himself and said nothing for a long time, just trying to reassure her with his presence. Then after a while he spoke again:
"Well Foxy, I may not be a fifty foot long undulatin' jellyfish that's so fast you can't see me, but I'm here for you. You'll always have me!"
She looked at him . . . his honest, earnest face, his eyes filled with sincerity and love . . . and in spite of herself she smiled. In fact, she even laughed a little.
"Oh Dale . . . you're right! You're much better than any gigantic undulating flying jellyfish that no one can see. And I'm sorry if I acted otherwise."
"Hey, no problem!" Dale said, "After all, I went pretty much through the same thing when I learned that the man in the moon was just craters and stuff."
"Yes, that does sound very much like the same thing," Foxglove admitted.
"Besides, even if those sky thingies don't really exist, you're still never really alone. There are still those funny looking little microscopic worms that live in your eyelash follicles. There's one in each of 'em, I think. That's a lot of microscopic worms!" And the seriousness of his expression as he said this broke through Foxglove's last defenses and swept away her self-pity like a toy boat in a raging flood.
She laughed her head off.
"So . . . hungry?" Dale asked her.
She realized that indeed she was. Her melancholy had prevented her from noticing this until now, but with relief in that department came a consciousness of the gnawing in her stomach.
"Yes. Yes, I am," she said.
"Tell you what," Dale said, "you just wait right here for a while. First I'm gonna pop us up a batch of my world-famous popcorn. Then I'm gonna ask Gadget to loan us some of her 'In Search Of' tapes . . . "
"Her what?"
"I don't know how she did it, but Gadget has a whole slew of tapes of the old Seventies 'In Search Of' series, the one hosted by Leonard Nimoy. It's so much better than the new one."
"Never heard of it," she confessed.
"Oh it's great, Foxy!" Dale assured her, "they're all about life's unexplained mysteries . . . the Bermuda Triangle, the Lost Dutchman's Mine . . . my favorite's the one about that Latvian guy. Anyway, I'm sure after watchin' 'em you'll feel better because you'll see that there are still plenty of mysteries left in the universe!"
"Gadget has that series on tape?" Foxglove asked incredulously.
"Like I said, I don't know why or when or how she did it . . . but when she first moved in with us she had those tapes. Somehow she recorded 'em on rodent size cassettes and they're still in there. Funny thing, she never watches 'em herself—least if she does I don't know nothin' about it—but she's let me watch 'em before and they're really great!"
"That Latvian guy?" Foxglove asked.
"Trust me, Foxy . . . that's the best one!" Dale assured her.
"All right, Cutie, you win!" she agreed, "You go pop the corn and fetch the tapes and we'll watch a couple."
"A couple?" Dale asked, "Foxy, we're gonna have a marathon! We'll watch 'em all night long?"
"But . . . but what happens if a case comes up in the morning and . . . "
"We've got a case already: Operation Cheer Up Foxy!" Dale assured her, "That's important enough a case to work on all night and not worry about tomorrow."
"Oh Dale . . . you're better than any mystery of the universe!" Foxglove proclaimed. "Shame on me for feeling sorry for myself because of something that never existed anyway!"
"Shhh . . . no more of that, now. You just relax and leave it all to me. Be right back!" And he kissed her before disappearing into the kitchen.
"I am so incredibly lucky!" she said to herself.
- - - - -
The ball of popcorn hung suspended in mid-air. It had always hung there and in all likelihood would continue to hang there until the end of time. It was poised above two equally still, silent figures, their mouths open as if to receive the floating delicacy, even though this would never happen. This is the way the world was. The world was full of still, silent things that never changed . . . ever. How curious, thought the strange flying creature as it circled about and among these figures and the others that were in this tree residence. Oh well, some things were never meant to be known. And one might imagine it was laughing with joy as it wrapped affectionately about the unmoving lovers before disappearing to the outside to join its innumerable fellows.
The End