West Corner of the Park 3

By Bill Kieffer

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This is probably a good time to say, hey, I don't own Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew.  DC comics does.  They, in turn are own by Time-Warner... who are kinda co-existing with AOL... at least at the time of this writing.

There's no profit to be found here.

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Andy didn't so much stop crying as he let the tears run their course.  He was able to, after a short period, get up off the ground and dust off his thickly etched knees, and count his blessings that no one had seen him give in like that.

As a Reptile, he was used to disappointments, so he did what his mother always said to do.  He got up and dusted himself off.  He checked in his thigh sack for the time and sighed.  Mr. Hewitt wouldn't be back for three hours yet and the park could get real boring without anyone to play with.

Still, he had the red plastic disc and a whole park to explore.  Maybe he'd find another Tortoise to play with, although just about any Reptile would be nice.  But he wouldn't turn his nose up at a Sloth.  It'd be nice to know a Mammal he could outrun.

He tossed the disc up and he caught it when it came back down.  He caught it, yippie.  Hooray.  He tossed the disc up and caught it again.  A tiny smile broke out on his face on the third vertical toss.  "You were always such a happy baby," he could hear his mother say in the past, the ghost of her laughter slipping from the bowels of his mind.

"I don't wanna be a baby," he muttered softly as a pout replaced the smile.  "I want to get out of here and get my own job and buy me a new place to live.  Alone."

Yet, the disc still flew back up in the air and each time it went higher.  Andy had to zig zag a bit to get himself under it after awhile.  Before too long, he was having a relatively nice time letting his eyes and body follow the disc as his mind wandered far a field.

Things could be better for him.  Things happened to people all the time, even cold-bloods.  Things like winning the lottery or getting super-powers.  He'd seen it on the news, the same way he'd seen the automobile accident that had taken his parents away from him.  That was another thing that happened to people, a bad thing.  Sooner or later, some "thing" was going to happen to Andy Costley and he'd show them.  He'd show them all.

Disc went up.  Disc came down.

He'd be rich and famous with a white sexy Lapine gal on each arm and everywhere he went would be by limo to places with many Furs stuck behind red velvet ropes and spotlights that paced importantly across the sky.  Rova Barkett would stick a microphone in front of his beak and they would pretend he didn't know that she was also Yankee Poodle.

Disc went up.  Disc came down.

He'd fly through the air with a device of his own making, racing Fastback along the ground, laughing easily at those left behind in their wake as they humbly threw themselves into flaming disaster to save the day.  They would move too fast to ever be photographed, so fleet that the world seemed full of strobe lit mannequins.  And they would never stop trying to save them all.

Disc went up and came back down.  For the eighth or ninth time, he had caught it easily.  He was getting good at this and aimed a bit higher with each toss up.  It was the only way he was going to get better.

Maybe he'd get good enough to a major league baseball player.  There were already Repts as catchers, but it would be cool to be an outfielder or a pitcher.  It would be so cool if he could just have his own baseball card.

Disc went up and sideways, caught by a sudden breeze.  Keeping his eye on the red disc, Andy side stepped to stay under it.  Suddenly, the world bent around him and the path slide out from under his feet.  He tumbled down the embankment and barked his toughened chest a length of exposed concrete pipe as he slid to a halt.

For a moment, Andy lay there wondering what had happened.  He rolled shakily to his feet and looked up the rise.  It didn't take a genius to see that he had fallen from the path down into the drainage area.  How embarrassing.  For that moment, he was glad to be a Tortoise.  Surely Juan or Jarvis would have torn their pretty fluffy hides on the pipe had they fallen as Andy had.  He tried not to dwell on the fact that either fosterling was too graceful to ever have fallen like that.

With a deep breathe, Andy looked about for the red disc.  He found it to his left, in a copse of trees circling the muddy "shoreline" of the stagnant runoff pond.  His bare unwebbed feet squished in the mud as he got to the half dead sapling that held the red flyer hostage.  He didn't like the feel of that at all, but at this moment that circular piece of plastic was really the only friend he had.  Andy simply wasn't going to abandon it, the way he'd been abandoned so many times before.

He shook the tree and suddenly a strong chemical smell struck at him.  Andy stopped and concentrated on not vomiting where he stood.  In a moment, it passed as if the scent had never existed at all.

Holding his breathe, Andy shook the tree again and this time the red disc fell out.  It turned in mid-air and slid deeper towards the center of the artificial depression until it landed with a plunk.

"Water," Andy said as if the world was conspiring against him.  A flutter of fear clutched his heart, for unlike almost all their cousin species, Tortoises could not swim without a floatation device.  Andy wasn't about to give into fear, however.  He could see a log that went right up the edge of the brackish water and even stretched over the surface a bit.  With a stick and careful moves, Andy was sure he could rescue the disc.

It'd be good practice for when he was a superhero, he told himself.  

The log was solid and quite strong enough to hold his weight.  A four foot long oak branch with a fork of smaller branches at the end made for a good skimmer. 

To his credit, Andy did everything perfectly.  His balance was impeccable and the stick did not get in his way.  His only mistake involved the fulcrum point of the log and the weight his body brought to bear on the end of the log suspended over the water.

The log simply stood up with the smacking sound of mud giving up its prize.  There was a splash as the young Reptile's body slid beneath the surface of the water into a surprisingly deep drop-off.

With the weight off the short end, the log fell casually back into the mud.  Only the most careful observers would notice the log had been move at all.