On Bowling for Books

Dear Mr. OR,

The other night my darling bride and I made a trip to the mall. Now I'm not particularly fond of Malls as they are usually quite loud and full of busy, unhappy, pushy people and so I try to avoid them where possible. However, the Lumpy's darling bride had not been out of the house in quite some time and was expressing a strong desire to be amongst throngs of people so we bundled up the Beast and off we went. While at the Mall we ran into a small pet store. It is well known that the Lumpy's darling bride cannot see cute animals and simply pass by. This probably was as much to blame for the ease with which the Lumpy household was invaded by the Beast as was anything else. And so it wasn't long after we spotted the pet store that we were inside with my darling bride petting, and ogling every furry animal in sight. It is noteworthy that the Beast appeared to show the same weakness although it did look a bit ravenous while viewing the dachshunds. As this was going on I wandered aimlessly until I came across a very cleaver contraption. It was a large plastic ball that the attendant explained was used to give small animals exercise, not unlike one of those running wheels. You simply put the small animal into the ball and let the animal go where ever it would like. Well I must admit that my first thought was to buy a mouse and one of these balls as a make shift toy for the Lumpy's two cats. But then I mentally calculated the price of keeping the mouse fed and clean up of the inside of the ball on a regular basis and decided it was too much maintenance for a cat toy. It was not long before my synapses were firing again; however, and I realized that a larger ball would be an excellent way to keep the Beast from destroying everything in its path. To date the Beast typically makes our house a disaster by pulling down anything it can get its grubby little paws on. This ball would certainly prevent the Beast from reaching anything of importance. A brief inquiry quickly dashed all hopes of finding an adequately sized ball especially after pointing to the Beast when asked what size I was looking for. At this point the attendant became far less cooperative and I felt it would be best if my darling bride quit ogling the local wild life and departed for a more hospitable environment with me post haste. Although I had met this momentary setback I was not as of yet feeling like giving up. When Corporate America fails to provide; it is time for the industrious individual to engineer his own solution. And so I called my Brother who works in HVAC. He is well versed in all things metallic and a bit of a wizard with building things. A date was set and he arrived with all sorts of metal pipe, welders, soldering equipment etc. etc. First we would need to build a frame. This was precisely why I had called him and like any noble brother he came with just the thing. Flexible copper pipe. It took very little time to bend the pipe into several three foot diameter rings and weld the ends into a single piece. Next we wrapped both sides of our construct with heavy duty screen keeping it as spherical as we could manage and covered over all of the sharp edges with duct tape. We moved the cage ball into the house and my brother who was now late for a prior engagement took his leave while I wandered around the house looking for the Beast.

It was not long before I found her as she had left an extensive trail of debris for me to follow. And so I quickly took the Beast and placed it into the ball and closed the ball door. The Beast took to it immediately and it wasn't long before she had the whole thing rolling around the house at top speed. As I watched I noticed that the wake of destruction which the Beast usually leaves behind it was no longer present. I was so happy to see that another one of my plans had worked that I went to the kitchen to brew myself a victory coffee to celebrate. That was when I heard the crash.

Racing around the corner I saw the Beast happily sitting in its ball happy as could be. Covering the ball was a not so small mound of books. The Beast had run head long into my largest bookshelf and managed to collapse the entire structure. And so I leave you while I clean up the hundreds of books which still lay strewn around my floor. I remain always;

Respectfully Yours,

The Lumpy