LONG WINDED TALE OF SQUASHED SLUGS AND HOBGOBLIN GENIOUS AS READ TO NEXT GENERATION ROBOT GRANDCHILD AND MAYBE OTHER DAUGHTER’S NEW CAT SOMETIME IN ITS NINTH LIVE

Once before bed-time, in a land really far away from here, or that at least it seemed farther than closer, there lived a clan of creatures who in many ways had been around forever, or at least for a while before time mattered.   In the early days, these creatures were hard to find, they spent most of their days under rocks, mostly surviving by consuming slimes, molds, and algae salads to keep their digestive system fiber levels balanced and their waste production regular and manageable.  Survival on such a diet meant the hobgoblins didn’t really need much for teeth, for the meals they chose, were pretty easy to swallow.  They also developed large eyes, to make it possible to find their way around in the dark world, they lived in, under rocks.  So, with their big toothless grin and wide-open eyes, the hobgoblins seemed to have a permanent smiley face, perched atop their sticklike bodies.  To an outsider they appeared friendly and likeable, and not much of a threat, which they mostly weren’t in those days before time.

After many years of surviving as simple, mostly well-meaning members of their rock filled community, the goblins began to get bored with their life under the dark and damp rocks, eating seemingly lower forms of life and occasionally they crawled out from under their shelters to warm up, explore, and see if they could find something more interesting to shallow.  At first these explorations were very limited.  Lifetimes spent under rocks resulted in the hobgoblins having a very light skin.  So, when they first exposed their skin to sunlight, they burned and turned pink.  One would think that the burns these early forms of life received would have taught the hobgoblins to restrict their adventures out from under the rock, to the night-time hours, which sounded easy, but was rather difficult in practice since the goblins had not yet figured out how to tell time. 

Scoring highly in the intelligent tests of their day, the hobgoblins were classified as smart creatures in the realm of mostly rocks, so  they got around in their world without clocks, using alternative methods.  During the daytime, they noticed the shadows on the side of their rock shelter, opposite the sun, and began to push small stones, and more maneuverable and larger round rocks around with their apparently, mostly happy faces and hands to mark the extent of the dark shadows that they could venture out to during the daylight, and avoid reburning their now mostly pink healed thin-skinned bodies.  With this new ground to explore the goblins soon found many more taste-y things to eat from the shadowy side of their rock lined boundaries.  One of their favorites was fried smashed and squashed slug. 

They invented this recipe one sunny day when the hobgoblin known as Appy was exploring the shadows and bumped his wagging, hung out of his toothless mouth tongue, into a slug.  Appy was surprised and actually delighted by the sweet and savory after-taste the slugs slime left on his tastebuds. Tasting a slug, and eating a slug were however two very different tasks.  Appy didn’t let the challenge of turning a taste into a meal, bring him down, as he knew the other goblins looked up to his genius for ways to save their days.  He knew that he would not disappoint them on this day for sure!  His design and building supervision of the shadow tracking stone pushing system used to figure out how far out the goblins could venture in the daylight and avoid getting sunburned, left him feeling full of confidence that he could figure out this new challenge, despite not knowing how much time it would take him. 

And soon a lightbulb went off in Appy’ s mind after tasting the slug, and he realized that he could recycle the same stone pushing technique they had used to track sun shadows, increase its efficiency, and use it to smash the slug into a swallowable, slurp-able, smoothy for all his hobgoblin friends to share – short of any unforeseen resource shortages, but these pesky problems could be gotten around by simply substituting new resources.  Despite his initial confusion over what the strange “light bulb” image was that showed up in his vision, he crawled back under the rock with a full head of steam, to find his best friend Oopsy, and explained his idea to his listless friend.  It took Oopsy a while to wrap his head around what Appy was telling him, but eventually Oopsy shimmied out from under the rock with some encouraging prodding and poking from Appy’s raised and extended stick figure-like hand.   

Appy talked Oopsy into putting all his energy into pushing a round black rock that had been heating up in the sunshine, towards Appy, who was standing behind a less mobile lumpy rock in the shade of the home rock shelter.  Appy knew from tracking records that the targeted slug was slowly but surely sliding on his regular slime covered path between the now rolling black rock, and the mostly stable lumpy rock.  Despite the challenge Oopsy faced in getting his round black rock to hit the slug before the slow-moving meal ticket slid out of harm’s way, Appy’ s hoots of encouragement of “atta boy Oopsy!” to his pal, ensured that the slug would not see the light of another day.

 (At this point the story teller will skip all the gory details about what happened when the slug found himself between the round black rock and the hard stable lumpy rock for a time when there might not be any small children around anymore to listen.  This is to avoid exposing them to any nightmares or trauma of other sorts that we in this day and age don’t quite yet really understand, or are yet capable of dealing with in a mature manner.  I am pretty sure my robot grandchild would not have a problem with these details assuming my oldest daughter doesn’t have him busy vacuuming her floor, nor likely would my other daughter’s cat who probably licks his chops at the idea of eating slugs, but he probably would not stick around that long to hear this part of the tale anyway.  So, Robot grandchild, and other daughters’ cat, if you decide to come back, you will have to wait to hear this part of the story, assuming I am around to tell it, and the cat makes it to his ninth life, on some day in the future.  And now for the rest of the story).    

For a moment, Appy felt down right joyous!  His ingenuity had landed him a meal fit for a king, or in his mind a meal fit at least for a hobgoblin genius, and then his mind wandered in between swallows of slug smoothy about who the king in his latest vision was, what kind of powers the creature might have, and how could a genius like him get one of the cool shiny sparkly crowns the dude was wearing.  Appy continued slurping up mouthfuls of the mashed slug, and soon found himself bursting at the seams from consuming all the rich squished slug he could pack down his goblin gullet.  Oopsy in the meantime had to find a spot in the cool shade of the shelter rock to rest and recuperate from the event as he was really tired out, banged up, and actually feeling a bit sleepy, for Appy had literally dragged him out from the middle of a nap before the smashing slug rock and roll fest had begun. 

Appy paused from swallowing, and wiped the excess drips of slug slime from his gum lined lips and then smacked them, and leaned back against the now slug covered and hot black round rock, and panted for a bit to regain his composure. Once again, his trusty waging tongue came across a swath of now fried slug that had been cooking in the sun for a few minutes, re-igniting the excitement he first felt when his tastebuds had generated the sensations created by touching uncooked slug slime, for the first time!  This renewed source of re-fined taste allowed him to overcome the feeling of fullness and slight nausea, and pack more of the tasty treat into his face.  Salvaging fried slug from the hot black rock was truly a delightful ordeal and Appy was overjoyed with the overeating experience, while Oopsy was feeling mostly still wore out and dozed off deeper into sleep.

But Appy still wasn’t ready for a break, and he needed to find out if it was just him who would enjoy his new delicacy, or if other hobgoblins might also enjoy his new culinary concoction.  He then proceeded with the first taste test by grabbing a handful of the fried slug and slapped it onto the sweet spot center of the tastebuds of the snoring Oopsy’s protruding and drooping tongue.   Oopsy immediately woke up, retracked his tantalized tongue, and jumped up and responded with an astounding hymn of “mmm, mmm, good!”.  Appy smiled knowing that those words confirmed, that this test – was truly, a success!

Realizing that he and Oopsy could never consume the whole smashed slug fried delicacy, before the sun and now accumulating flies, combined their synergized powers of assault, to turn their goblin feast into a putrid festering mess – Appy was filled with a rush of goblin gobbling motivated kindness to conduct his first act of philanthropy, by inviting some of his other select friends to join him on the table top like surface of the lumpy rock to consume what was left of the fried slug as fast as they could.  Painfully, in their rush to consume, they reburned their almost healed mostly peal-free pink skin in the heat of the afternoon sun that poured over them on their no goblin zone side of the sun safe boundary, and also burned their tongues when they failed to let the fried slug cool before devouring it.  Eventually they all joined Oopsy in the shade of the shelter rock for a long nap where they hoped to recover from the ill side effects that came with digesting way too much of the new found fondest of foods, and maybe relieve the burning sensation on their sun burned hides with the drool overflowing their smiling faces, and possibly even obtain extra cooling from the current of mouth wash as it spilled over their pain inflamed overheated tongues.    

Appy didn’t need much sleep and had a large gift of will-power he had inherited from his father, that enabled him to temper his feasting and hence avoid some of the worst side effects of gorging fried smashed slug, and proceeded to take advantage of the quiet time for productive thought.  He climbed up on top of the shelter rock to look down on the site below, wondering how he could capitalize on all the good fortune of the day.  He knew that his future could be bright indeed, especially now that he had figured out how to motivate his friend Oopsy to provide the labor needed to power all the new inventions he had in mind.  

Appy’ s future seemed limitless and he marked this day by waking up his friends and getting them to roll the round black rock out to a place much farther from the home rock shelter than what any of them could ever have imagined reaching before.  And Appy from the top of the rock shelter declared – “from this day forward, we shall always remember this day as the first black rock fried day”.  His friends greeted his declaration with repetitive chants of “We Want More! We Want More!” and then crawled back under their rock for the night. 

And from that withering height, as the sun began to set,  Appy hardly noticed the flies feeding on the leftover slug, or the piles of loose fetid stools his friends had deposited around their resting place, nor the smell of the bad gas expelled from his friends’ behinds that wafted away with the cooling breeze, and he barely even saw the family of slugs trying to slide away into the shadows from the unfolding scene to save what might be left of their limited hides –  from the relentless setting sun and slug squashing devouring Hobgoblins. 

The genius hobgoblin Appy leaned back, and reflected on how good it all was, and would be in the years to come, and regurgitated a joyful, resounding, belch that echoed off the far distant, round black rock that had made it all possible.  And he was also thankful that he was able to catch, and then re-swallow – the acidified remnants of the fried squashed slug smoothy that came up with the belch, back down into his dark digestive juices for further processing.  Mastering rock revolutions had taught Appy many things about happiness, and with those lessons behind him, he finally rested, in the sweet aftertaste of life empowered by rocks driven by good friends, and dreamed of one day joining the stars that shined above him while drinking from his golden hobgoblin goblet full of a double shot of smashed slug eggnog laced gimlet, and wearing nothing but his new sparkly rock encrusted crown, on top of his smiling face, propped above his stick-figure like body, whose jewels Oopsy had recently polished, into infinity!     

The End, We Can Only Hope. 

Coming soon to an electronic device near you (assuming technology doesn't kill us all first) the audio book version.