I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure and Which Way books. The books all started the same. Then you’d be able to pick what the lead character did, and flip the appropriate page in the book, and carry on the story from there.
This is a variation on that. I start the story. Then you take over and finish the story in the comments. This is a great way to capitalize on my insanity and laziness.
Thanks to Ms_Print for inspiring this week’s story.
The Ballad of Chippy
Chickens. Seriously, Chickens?
Chippy had watched the little brick house for a long time now — a long time to him, anyway. What is time to a chipmunk? The family of humans had moved in a few months ago. Two adult humans, two smaller humans. They had three cats and two dogs. It looked nice in the house, Chippy thought, from his drafty perch in the tree, where he nibbled at his foraged berries and dandelions, never enough to fill his belly. Because Chippy was hungry.
The house was lit up at night. Sometimes the family watched smaller families on a glowing box. And the other animals got their bellies scratched.
Then the female human came home with a box. Baby chickens? Chickens were allowed in the house? Then why not a chipmunk? Chippy saw his chance when the female human was bringing in foraged bags of food from their car. He stood on his hind legs in the kitchen and smiled. Hello! He squeaked. But the female did not squeak back. She screamed. If a chipmunk could be said to cry, Chippy did so. But he walked out, like a man.
The lights in the brick house went on again at night. Chippy scampered down from his tree and looked in a window, seeing the female and male sitting on the sofa, baby chickens nestled against the humans, cats barricaded in the kitchen, dogs in front of the TV, smaller humans writing in notebooks. Chippy’s lonely nose and front paws were pressed against the window glass — the glass, so thin, and yet so thick; so fragile, and yet so strong, so good, at keeping him away from his goal, which is love. Someday Chippy will find love. He did not find it in among the yielding and immobile oaks of the forest. He did not find it on the pine floors of the home he had slipped into, his heart spilling over with love the way the bowls on the table spilled over with popcorn. Perhaps one day he would find it among the towering trees of another place. Chippy scampered towards the highway.
Sound off in the comments where did Chippy go next?
Image: Flickr
