The return of the garden gnomes
Star-spangled high above September 25, 2005.
The garden gnomes came back this week; oh yes, they did, they did. Three days ago, while I slept, gently napping, dreaming of the Spice Girls’ luscious feet, there came a tapping, then a whapping, followed suddenly by a fap, fap, fapping: A wheedling noise, a whirring and stirring, coming from under my bed cushions and out in the corn fields growing from the AK-47 mounted atop my roof. The noise was sad, low, almost imperceptible—but, by God, it was surely the sound of them, or my name’s Gerónimo Gerhardt Papadopoulos-Schickelgruber xvii, from the seventh planet orbiting Epsilon Euobea! (That’s the greenish-yellow one with the buttocks-shaped moon above it.)
I was right, alas! In one came, alone, staring at me with its big gnomey eyes, glaring, staring and glaring out from under that little red felt cap (not unlike a pointed fez, like the ones they award at Sicilian rat-fighting contests!), making that noise that they make: The noise that announces to the world, “I’m a lawn gnome, a garden gnome; I’m your master, and the Englebee Troobles don’t exist and never have! Hah, haha, hahaha!”
I screamed “Aaaaiiieee!!! Oh no! Gnomes! Gnomey gnooooomes!! Whaaahoohoohoo!! Pnåaåaårp!!” and tried to step on it with my big toe as my hearts pounded in my chest, all aquiver and squishy like burning lemonade, but alas it didn’t work—the slippery little creature just giggled its little giggle, nodded at me like a nude squirrel on LSD, and slithered blithely out the door, back to its gnomey lair.
Yes, you read that correct, dear reader: It slithered blithely out the door.
I’m sure of it now: Not only have the gnomes returned in all their flatulent glory, and with a vengeance (and probably a vole-infested cow pie or two, a dingleberry, and a hamster), but they’ve learned new tricks too—alas, they have learned them from me, Pnårp!