Sybil Bruncheon's "Tales & Tails"... Millie

Millie had started out as most urban kitties do, abandoned very early in life by a neglectful mother either too drunk or too busy with gentlemen-callers (or both!) to raise her litter properly.……Although Jacob Riis photographed her at one of the most dire times of her young life, Millie’s natural beauty shone through, and brought her enormous notoriety in all the gazettes of the day. Society matrons flocked to her neighborhood near the dank and dangerous slum known as Five Points in an attempt to “rescue” her and be seen as the “great philanthropists” that wealthy citizens found to be the most fashionable hobby.

Millie did indeed go on to a very comfortable life, but she nevertheless became an inveterate thief of people's personal property… It started out with small unimportant objects; pieces of string, a paper clip, rubber balls, coins, things left on dressing tables....You know the type! But then she began to raise the stakes… and the consequences. The police couldn't trace her crimes for years because there was no rhyme or reason to them... a rubber band on Monday would be followed by a $2000 earring on Wednesday. What she couldn’t carry off to her hide-aways, she’d simply knock off the edge of tables in an off-hand sort of way, usually when no one was looking, but sometimes right in front of them!

Finally, the authorities tracked her down...she had holed up in a seemingly abandoned paper bag….but her rustling gave her away. As they closed in, she leapt out at them in one final burst of surprise scaring the crap out of all of them. Yowling triumphantly, she escaped and was never really caught again...although there were reports for years that she could be seen lying on other people's desks, pillows, sweaters, bathmats, open romance novels, fashion magazines, dress patterns, gentlemen’s “French Calendars”... you get the idea. She could, on occasion, allow the unwary to scratch behind her ears and compliment her on her lovely whiskers as she did her bathing. Reportedly she was very well loved in spite of, and perhaps because of, her life of narcissism and mischief. …..She had private accounts at Luchow’s, Tony Pastor’s, "21", The Stork Club, The Russian Tea Room, The Rainbow Room, oh, all over..... Of course, she never paid her bills, but they kept seating her anyway…. And at the best tables!

She lived to the ripe old age of 22, although she lied about her age till the very end, claiming she was only 3 or 4. She might have lived longer, but she was killed in a motor car accident of her own making. Her friends had warned her not to drive herself, but she insisted, even though it was very difficult for her to see over the steering wheel of a Duesenberg, and a stolen one at that! She was laid to rest in a very expensive cigar thermidor of carved mahogany with her favorite lobster fork and a brass door knocker in the shape of a pineapple. Her many kitty friends delivered hours of eulogies in the alleyway behind Bergdorf’s …at the top of their lungs…. And the nice people at the Plaza Garden Court Café catered the luncheon… (Other diners were heard to complain about the yowling.)

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

My friend, Leigh Gannon, shared this poem with me: "Nothing Is Too Small Not to Be Wondered About" by May Oliver...

The cricket doesn’t wonder if there’s a heaven

or, if there is, if there’s room for him.

It’s fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings.

If he can, he enters a house

through the tiniest crack under the door.

Then the house grows colder.

He sings slower and slower.

Then, nothing.

This must mean something, I don’t know what.

But certainly it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been an excellent cricket all his life.

[Want to read other stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

Sybil Bruncheon's "Our Little Peoples' Library"...

Hello, Boys & Girls! Do you like to read?... oh, I hope so! It's very nice to let our imaginations help create the stories we hear, as opposed to sitting like dumb-ass Uncle Alf, or Drunky Cousin Julie, (or maybe even your parents and let the TV do all the thinking for the day!) Here are three books that are currently in your school library, but don't let the titles fool you! They're a good deal more interesting than they sound!… and Mummie will tell you a few more fascinating details about each of them, but don't worry! I won't spoil the stories or the surprise endings...

THE ADVENTURES OF JERRY MUSKRAT: Published by the Bedtime Story Books Co. and written by Thornton W. Burgess (later tried and convicted of espionage against His Majesty's Royal Navy). Jerry, though a rodent, proves to be extremely clever and even infernally brilliant at tricking various other animals in the village of Little Puddle-Wink into mischief, mayhem... and finally, murder. Fully illustrated including this cover of Jerry giving a ride to Mayor Tim-Toad Terwilliger across Lake Loon. Unfortunately, toads are not very good swimmers, and Jerry has fooled Mayor Tim Toad into playing "Let's Ride A Submarine"... can you guess who's the submarine... and who isn’t?

THE PIE AND THE PATTY PAN by Beatrix Potter: An early story by Miss Potter, long before she found her fame with much more wholesome characters like Peter Rabbit and his bunny family! She had started her career not with animals but with inanimate objects that had become living, talking, anthropomorphized beings, often wearing clothes, holding jobs, and even engaging in questionable “adult practices”. Her first stories were directed at young girls and their education in housekeeping, mothering their dolls, and “lady arts”. THE PIE AND THE PATTY PAN sounded at first like some sort of story about cooking and dessert, but within a page or so, the Patty Pan revealed its desire to fiercely spank a perfectly innocent and trusting Pie… and in a fiery oven fully illustrated as a 9th circle of Hell, complete with demonic rolling pins and other kitchen utensils waving red hot forks over their heads. This book is NOT for the faint of heart… or for diabetics.

FRISKY SQUIRREL’S STORY: … by someone named Amy Prentice; The title, the cover art, the opening page… it all claimed to be a merry little children’s story, but the more you looked, the more dry, ordinary, almost banal it was. Indeed there was nothing frisky about the title character, his cohorts, the prose, the so-called plot and adventures… nothing. Cover to cover, it read more like an FBI dossier except with furry forest animals and their vegetable and flower pals; Mr. Howard Badger smuggled his next door neighbor Blackie Raven out of the basement with a briefcase full of hollow walnuts, Mrs. Gertrude Stoat confronted Fred Weasel about their history overseas in a petting zoo reserved for Ferrets and their associates, Lipshitz Lambkin escaped his pen disguised as an artichoke at three in the morning and informed the Bulb Council that a tulip was hiding in a bed of daffodils… possibly armed with a fully loaded carrot…

Just as each chapter would end, instead of a resolution there would be a short addendum claiming “More Information Is Pending.” Within a week of publication and release to Children’s Book Stores, there were claims that government officials, intelligence agencies, and foreign embassies were deciphering all sorts of top secret “intel” hidden in the remarkably dull tales. And code breakers by the hundreds were assigned the task of figuring out anagrams from the characters’ names. The best they could come up with included “Queer Pooterzj”, “Commy Pinqbottum”, and “Haz Coootie derr”.  Even the name Amy Prentice only turned into “May Pet Nicer”, or “Meant Pricey”, or “Prince Meaty”… whatever…

[Want to read other stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

BREAKING NEWS from the CNN news desk: WEATHER BULLETIN!!!

... horrible! HORRIBLE!!... Panic has set in all over the North East as the blizzard closes in on millions of terrified citizens from Washington DC to Boston. Grocery shelves are completely empty, and so... people, normally loving and civilized people are considering the unthinkable! They have begun to look at their own beloved four-legged friends...their pets!... Their "fur-babies"...as food! FOOD, DAMMIT!.... The ASPCA and Bide-A Wee have issued alerts to household animals, residents of zoos, and passing wildlife to be on guard! Take nothing for granted! A smiling human, even someone you consider a friend, should now be considered armed and extremely dangerous until the storm has passed! Be especially cautious around veterinarians, short-order cooks, and Facebook food-group administrators! Please! Save yourself and your litter from becoming an entrée, a tray of hors d'oeuvres, or a bedtime snack! You have been warned! An outstretched hand familiar by sight and smell, and even holding a so-called “treat” may be the hand of a stranger....AND A STRANGLER!! Run! RUN....and FETCH YOUR OWN SAFETY!!!

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

Sybil Bruncheon's TALES & TAILS!... NANNY PRUMBLE and her Kiddie Kollege......

Mrs. Fernanda-Marie Prumble had been widowed for over ten years when she made a decision. She had never had children herself, and her husband had been 18 years older than her (that’s 126 in human years), and she realized that her heart was too full of nurturing love to let it go to waste one more day. She had always been popular with neighbors’ children who came to spend the afternoon playing in her yard, listening to her stories, learning her nursery songs, and pretending to be burglars stealing her delicious cookies while she pretended to have her back turned not noticing! She was so well known in the neighborhood, that everyone nicknamed her “Nanny Prumble”, and that’s exactly what she became! She opened a school in her own home calling it Kiddie Kollege, and she oversaw every aspect of the care, feeding, education, and enrichment of her charges!… Children who came to her “academy” could expect to be tutored in history, geography, poetry, advanced mathematics, and literature with special attention on the classics; “My Friend Flicka”, “Charlotte’s Web”, “Black Beauty”, “Make Way For Ducklings”, “The Wind In The Willows”, “International Velvet”, “The Incredible Journey”, “Old Yeller”, “The Velveteen Rabbit”, and “Lolita”…

Everything went smoothly for years, all of her children growing and going off to school to be replaced by their younger brothers and sisters, generation to generation, until one particularly disturbing incident in a late afternoon in mid-Winter. The sun had already set as it does at that time of year, and the parents were due to pick up their young within an hour or so, when suddenly there was a crash of glass in one of the rooms off the main hall in Nanny Prumble’s home. The children screamed in terror, and Nanny Prumble ran into the playroom in time to see a large burly man with a surly manner lumbering through the smashed window in a dog-catcher’s uniform and cap and wielding a huge and very soiled grab-it net! He must have been 6’ 4” and weighed 240 lbs.!!! Nanny, being a terrier-mix, was very petite and couldn’t have weighed more than 12 lbs herself! But the “terrier” part of her so-called “mix” was the operative factor in what followed. Apparently, the fight lasted less than 3 minutes, according to the police…and the forensics experts.

The intruder, Mr. Filbert Fullers, a lower echelon civil servant in a neighboring town, had heard about the Kiddie Kollege, and had decided to spy on the property, finally making his move that fateful evening. He had climbed a hedge, raided her tool shed for a ladder, gotten through the window, and crossed about 12 feet into the room. Nanny Prumble had probably finished him off there but had dragged his mauled body into the front hall and was headed to the root-cellar, perhaps to bury him along with several old bones, some rubber balls, and a much-loved spiked collar that she had received from her college beau in the Westminster Obedience School. It turned out that humble and lovable Fernanda-Marie Prumble was actually from an exclusive family of rare Cпаржа-Hounds, a breed created and adored by both the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg dynasties. At a young age, she had escaped the international whirlwind and frantic pace of that “show-business” world, to live simply in the countryside with a nice older spaniel who wooed her with games of fetch, various chew-toys, and longing looks into her big brown eyes.

All of this came out in the newspapers along with extraordinary photographs of her with her many awards and prizes and parties with famous celebrities. Nanny Prumble was mortified, not only by all the attention, but also by what any formerly glamorous beauty would be; the passing of her youth, the public’s dismay at how she had changed, and of course the loss of her ready ability to catch a Frisbee in her mouth. She returned gratefully to the welcoming hearts of the children who loved her and their loyal and supportive parents and resumed her work with Kiddie Kollege. (postscript: All charges against her had been dropped, but the court DID request that, as part of her release, she add something to the cur-riculum at the school; HUMAN-ities….. “to give her students perspective and empathy for lesser species”. She complied, but with reservations. Nanny Prumble lived a long and very accomplished life. She died in her sleep at the age of 26….that’s a 182 in human years!)  

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]