"What a beautiful day!" Edd breathed deeply of the fresh summer air on his stroll through the cul-de-sac. It was so invigorating after all that time cooped up in the house. As he passed by Rolf's yard, he leaned on the fence and watched Rolf tie something to a chicken's head.

"There you are, Gertrude!" Rolf made a final adjustment to the little wig, then set the chicken down. "The fancy girl hairdo looks good, yes? You shall be queen of the barnyard, and Rolf will have fine new hens by the time of the Squid Harvest!" He glanced up to find Edd looking on in bemusement. "Hello, Head-in-Sock Ed-boy! You wish to see the annual courtship of the poultry, yes?"

"Um, well, actually Rolf I was just – "

"Just one moment," Rolf growled, suddenly suspicious. "Rolf does not see your partners in crime, squirrelish Ed-boy!" He peered around through narrowed eyes. "You do not fool Rolf with your painfully polite ways – he knows of the envy with which your Brain-of-Yams friend regards his chickens!" He advanced on Edd. "If Gertrude is disrupted in her dance of a thousand waddles, you will suffer the shame of the vengeful turnip for one hundred days!"

Edd glanced involuntarily towards Rolf's vegetable patch as he backed away from the fence. "I-I assure you, Rolf, my visit is entirely innocent – and unaccompanied! Both Ed and Eddy continue to serve the sentences meted out by their parents as the result of our previous ill-advised attempts to secure Ed's freedom from confinement!"

"You shared in these shenanigans as well?" Rolf still looked distrustful. "Then tell Rolf why you do not share in their fate."

Edd shrugged. The sticky note on the subject had only documented the duration of his punishment, not the reasoning behind it. "I suppose Mother and Father don't believe in unduly long sentences, Rolf. Three days was more than enough time for me to reflect on my misdeeds."

"You commit the same wrongdoing yet do not receive the same punishment?" Rolf shook his head. "The ways of this land are still strange to Rolf. How I long for my homeland, where he who pokes the carbuncles shall suffer the same retribution as he who prods the boil ... "

Edd brightened. "Yes, well, that brings me to the reason for this visit…in a manner of speaking - Since I'm free from my usual burden of scam-based obligations for the day, I had hoped I could use some of the time to learn more about the customs of your native homeland? In return I'd be more than happy to offer what insight I may on the social norms upheld here in the cul-de-sac – it could be a multinational meeting of the minds, if you will, a cultural exchange!" He smiled hopefully at Rolf.

"Hmm…" Rolf pondered over Edd's words. "Oho! You wish to become a Rolf-boy for the day, yes?" Before Edd could correct him, he announced his decision. "Okey-dokey! Come along, Double-D Rolf-boy! The day is young and there is much livestock to trim!" He lifted Edd over the fence and hauled him off towards his shed.

"No, wait, Rolf, I only wanted to discuss – " Realizing that his protests were falling on deaf ears, Edd sighed and let himself be toted along. "Well, this should prove to be educational, at the very least…" He only hoped there wouldn't be too much messiness involved.

*****

"Messy, messy, messy!" Ed did his best Double-D voice as he made the sock on his hand 'talk' to him. "Ed, your room is a…um…mess!"

"Shut up, Sock-head!" He bounced his toy monster up to confront the sock puppet. "This room is gonna make us rich! Kids'll pay big money to come see Ed's House of Mutant Slime!" He turned the monster to face him. "You're a genius, Lumpy!"

Ed beamed. Eddy was being so nice to him today.

"But Eddy, I am the genius!" The sock moved around to 'stand' in front of the monster again. "I can count to a hundred zillion, and I know words like, uh, sasquanicious, and I have got labels on all my stuff so I never forget what anything is!"

Poor Double-D, he seemed so worried. "There, there, Double-D, you are our Smarty Marty!" Ed patted the sock reassuringly. "You two keep working while I get us snacks – Ed is a good host!" He dropped the sock and the toy and trotted over to his bathroom.

"Hmm…" He checked the medicine cabinet, but it was empty except for his used dental floss collection. It was so nice of Sarah to save that for him every morning. Looking behind the toilet seat he found a dead bug as big as his hand, and a fuzzy pile of franks and beans. He shook his head – he was saving those for a special occasion. What, then, was there for now?

"Ooh!" Lifting the tub, he pried up a floor tile to uncover his secret stash of sandwich jerky. Some sandwiches got slimy after being left out for months at a time, but peanut butter ones, if squashed beneath something really heavy, got nicely dry and chewy – perfect for mid-morning snacking!

He snatched up the sandwiches and galloped back out to his room. "Food's here, guys! How is Slime World com – " He stopped and looked around. Not a single thing had been done since he'd left. Eddy and Double-D lay just where he left them. "Um, guys?"

"Oh, agony!" He put the sock back on his hand and made it talk. "We did not know what to do without you to help us, Ed!"

Ed laughed. "Aw, no problem guys! It is easier than falling down the stairs! Just take this stuff over here – " He lifted his chair cushion and scooped out a chalky blue substance. " – and some of this stuff here – " He stuck a finger in his ear and pulled out a sizable chunk of something gooey. "And moosh them together - like so!" Combining the two products caused them to fizz and bubble and expand. Within seconds, his entire floor was covered in a thickly oozing green matter.

"Cool, huh guys?" He looked around, but his friends were nowhere to be found. "Oops." He stuck a hand down into the slime and pulled out the sock and the toy monster.

The toy monster looked around. "Good work, Burrhead! The kids will be lining up around the block!"

Sock and toy both 'turned' towards him. "Thank you, Ed! You're a genius!"

Ed smiled happily. Where would his friends be without him?

*****

"Aaaigh!" Edd flailed wildly as he crashed through the side of Rolf's shed and flew through the air. His progress was halted by an unfortunately placed tree.

"And DO NOT return!" Rolf stomped out of the shed and shook his fist. "Are your pockets filled with the cheese rinds of fouless? Never has Rolf seen such disrespect for his livestock!"

Edd slid down the tree to the ground. He shook his head to clear it. "Rolf, please, I assure you Wilfred would not have come to any harm whatsoever!" He'd only wanted to investigate the inner workings of the porcine digestive system, how could he pass up such a golden opportunity? "Why, did you know that the anatomy of the humble pig more closely resembles that of human beings than that of any other – " he flinched as a long tube with a miniscule camera attached to one end came flying at him.

"Take your infernal contraptions and remove your foul carcass from the farm of Rolf! Do not let him behold you again without your fellow Ed-boys present to restrain your unbearable nosiness!" Behind him, Wilfred could be heard squealing plaintively. "Do not fear, Wilfred, the brainy weasel has been cast forth like lice from Papa's beard-combings! Come, be soothed with a bowl of Nana's warmed cabbage custard ... " With a final threatening glare in Edd's direction, Rolf reentered the shed to attend to his pig.

Edd picked himself up and sighed. It had started out so well – okay, well, it had started out so tolerably. He had worried that Rolf was getting irritated when he'd hooked up some copper wire between Victor's horns to create the first ever goat-powered electricity generator, and he suspected a limit was being reached when he'd conducted that brief behavioral study on the chickens (but what a breakthrough he'd made, discovering that hens could be taught sign language!), but who knew Rolf would be so adverse to a little on-the-fly physiology investigation? Perhaps such matters were considered taboo in his native culture.

Regardless, Edd felt a twinge of guilt as he listened to Wilfred's ceaseless squeals. He had certainly never meant to offend Rolf or upset any of his animals. For a brief moment, he considered going back in to apologize, but then his eyes fell on a large, crusty pile heaped just outside the shed. Rolf had mentioned something about needing help sorting his father's dried cow cud collection…

With a barely suppressed shudder, Edd backed quickly away from Rolf's farm and headed towards the street. After all, it surely wouldn't do to spend all his time with Rolf when there were so many other children in the cul-de-sac that he should get to know better…