Klarinet Archive - Posting 000169.txt from 2000/06

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: Mouthpiece mismatch
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 21:00:31 -0400

<><> Lelia wrote:
squeaks like Dick Vigorous. (Sorry about him, BTW -- thought I'd evicted
him for good last fall, but I guess I'd better get out the old
Hav-A-Heart trap....)

I'm glad to hear that you respect animal rights also. By the most
amazing coincidence, Dick Vigorous's third nephew has been visiting our
living room closet and has been annoying Cupcake (my daughter's cat). I
needed to do something about this because obviously my daughter's
interests are more important than those of a scruffy, unkem.... I mean,
than those of a fine dignified worldly-wise rat connoisseur of rare
clarinets.
I am irremediably opposed to cruelty of any sort towards all
animals, including verminous rodentia, but Dick Vigorous's third nephew
_had_ to go. I'm proud of the solution that I contrived:

I bought an old bass clarinet at the swap meet this weekend, and I
modified it a little bit. I knew full well that any relative of Dick's
would be as fully informed about clarinets as Dick himself is, and I
knew that Dick's nephew would spot instantly that I had modified the
register key to serve as a (dare I say this out loud?) as the bail of a
spring-loaded rat trap. I put a bit of cheese under the wrong end of
the key, and I made sure that the bail (the register key) was not
cocked. I waited.....
Sure enough, at 2:30 am, Cupcake's ears perked up, and she bared
her teeth and she slunk towards the clarinet. Quickly I removed Cupcake
from the room so that Dick's third nephew would feel emboldened to
approach the cheese. I heard the self-righteous rodent snicker and say,
"Foolish human bean! He doesn't know which end of the trap to put the
cheese! And he forget to set the trap! I can do a ballet on this thing
and grab the cheese with no danger!"

Well, I'm sure you know what happened next. Because I respect
animal rights, it wasn't a trap at all. It was a trebuchet and he was
standing unknowing on the bucket end of it! I pulled the dark thread
that Dick's nephew had not noticed in his gree... in his joy, and the
rodent flew out the open window. After he fell two stories, he landed
on a pile of marshmallows that I had put at precisely the right position
in the neighbor's front yard to cushion his fall. No harm, no foul.
But he got the message, I think.
I heard him chittering about "maybe I should cut back on the
recreational drugs?" as he staggered toward the sidewalk.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org