Stoge Tries Again. This Time With Ramona Who Will Talk

 

Stoge is not one who gives up easily. 

After the brush-off she received from Ralph, she decided on another tack. A serious reporter gets her story!
   Therefore, in her Otterly way she searched and ferreted the great forest through for the Home Nest of Ralph, but most of all Ramona, his Other, his True Luv, and all like that. Mrs. Ralph as it were.
   Otters have good noses, so at last she arrived at a sort of artificial branch covered structure a good bit off the pathway used by Mankind and dogs and such. It looked like a rounded teepee made of large fir branches with a lot of smaller material worked in for the sake of structure.
   Ralph was not there. Ramona was.  Ramona is quite glamorous for a Squatch. She is nearly blond; her fur is reddish but light and a bit curly. She stands about six feet tall and weighs around 250 pounds. Hefty for a human lady, but not for a robust creature like Ramona. In fact, she looks fine and delicate next to Himself.

Her statement:
   “We like to live close enough to Mankind to take a little advantage of some of their clever things, and to keep an eye on them.
   “We speak both American English, just from hearing so much of it all around us and Saslingua. People make a lot of noise. Yakyakyak! We speak Saslingua between ourselves.
   “Since Otters obviously don’t speak Sas., we can make do in English.
   “I learned about cooked food from watching people. It was not easy to get Ralph to try cooked meat, or any kind of salad but I kept at him until he gave up. Now he wants to lay his kill on that little grill all the time!
   “I had to have some dishes and pans and some utensils to even think about cooking and serving. He stole them, of course. He stole the salt and the pepper from campers. In Sas., the word for thievery is weet, on the intake of breath. We figure it’s fair game. They have everything. The trick is to find it and get in and get out before anybody notices. We have some tricky ways of getting around, but for right around home it’s get in and get out! For somebody Ralph’s size that is a pretty good trick right there. I mean, look at the size of him.
   “We don’t have thousands and thousands of words in Saslingua. We don’t need them. It’s a very emotive language, but not one of those that require tonal shifts. As you know, in English you can talk all day and rarely use the same word twice! Yeah. That’s an exaggeration, Stoge.
   “I made up a word for cooking. Muntof. Of course, I spread it around in conversation. It’s great to hear your own coinage coming back at ya. A lot of what I do doesn’t really amount to cooking. Sometimes it’s just mixing, but you get the idea. You Otters don’t cook at all do ya? Eat fish and mussels and whatnot, eh? Sweet, girl!
   “I’m getting tired of talking Stoge. English wears me out! Two more things then I need to do something around here. One, I’m thinking about writing a cookbook! No, really! Can you imagine, genuine roughing it by Ramona! Muntof Lempt!
   “The other thing is I worry about people. There are so many of them. They are like bees! They have troubles like when ant hills attack each other. They are so soft, and yet they kill each other. I don’t understand, Stoge. Do you?
   “They talk about God all the time and dress up in special rags and say special words about him and read a special old Book, but then they do mad things like they never heard of God.
   “I don’t know. Sometimes I think we Neff’oon got the best deal in life.”

   So, then little Stoge stuck her pencil in the wire binding of her little pad of paper having written a lot of notes. Then she tucked the pad of paper under her right forelimb.
   Ramona picked her up and held her at head height, they touched noses and said their thanks and farewells in the language of sweet beasts. Ramona set her back on the earth and Stoge took off running down unseen passages back to where she had come from.
   Ramona watched her go, standing with one hand on her hip and the other under her growing tummy. She laughed to herself and turned to her work, deep in the PNW forests of Douglas Fir and Cedar.