Milking the Elk

Last night it hailed at The Great Plotnik World Headquarters and Meatball Kitchen. Hail drifts more than 6 feet high piled up in the Lower Acreage. A neighbor child (OK, she was under forty five) erected a beautiful hailman, with an old bottle of pinot noir for a nose and small, organic black truffles for the buttons on his jacket. The Great Plotnik attached his hailshoes and managed to repair to the Rear Forty to milk the elk.

On his return, with a mischievous sneer, he gathered handfuls of fluffy hail and rolled them into a huge hailball inside his woolen mittens. Seeing The Great Ducknik staring at him, and sensing that this opportunity, given, you know, global warming, and the fact that it rarely dips under 55 degrees, may not come again, with all his might he hurled his missle, fully 1/16" in diameter, and melting fast, at The Great Ducknik, who continued to stare at him, either in gleeful comprehension of their shared experience, or perhaps wondering what strange conjunctions of the stars and weather patterns and just plain weird luck could have brought her to this spot.

"Rats," said The Great Plotnik, as the hailball evaporated before taking air.

Later on, Plot and Duck conspired, as they sat by the fire, to face unafraid the plans that they made.