The Man Who Filled His Guinea Pig with Helium
Norman Guppy was a healthy and well adjusted English man who excelled
at chess and folk dancing. One day, for no apparent reason, he decided
to fill his guinea pig with helium. He carried the animal under the
light of the stars into the shed at the bottom of his garden. Then
he connected it to a hose. The other end of the hose was attached
to a large canister of helium.
Norman found the hiss of the transferring gas oddly comforting, so
he paused to light a cigarette, helium being a non-flammable gas.
By the time his match was flicked out, the guinea pig had inflated
to the size of a beach ball. It was bumping up against the roof of
Norman's shed.
Norman had once stuck a pin into his sister's beach ball. After it
deflated, he sent it to the Royal Zoological society with a covering
letter that explained it was a new kind of colorful flat fish. The
Royal Zoological society was not fooled. His sister wrote to them
shortly afterwards asking them if they would accept her brother as
a uniquely deranged curiosity. He had pulled her hair in response.
Not because she had sent the letter, but because he did not understand
what 'uniquely deranged curiosity' meant and she knew it. She had
cried but he deliberately ignored her. He just went to his room and
quietly repressed the entire incident. Now it was unrepressing itself
with a vengeance.
Norman panicked. He pulled the hose from the mouth of his guinea
pig, which responded by paddling towards the open door. Before Norman
could stop it, it had escaped the shed and was floating away into
the star laden sky. Its name was Monty.
Monty floated over a few villages, a large plain and some low hills
before sunrise. Then he was picked up on the radar system of a secret
military base and recorded as an unknown hairy threat. Terrorism
was immediately suspected. As a matter of routine, two fully armed
Eurofighter Typhoons were scrambled.
It is generally agreed that the Eurofighter Typhoon's performance
is significantly better than that of the F-15C/D, the current air
superiority fighter variant of the F-15. It can easily engage with
a Saab JAS 39 Gripen coming at it full whack, for example. A low
flying beach ball shaped guinea pig ought to present little problem.
This proved to be the case.
Monty detonated with unsurprising ease. Tiny chunks of him fell into
a village. Most of them landed in gardens and were eventually eaten
by field mice. One of them, however, landed in the top pocket of
a freshly cleaned shirt hanging in the garden of an old lady who
was very scared of aliens. So when she came out the next morning,
and discovered that the shirt smelled of sulfur and had a small frazzled
lump inside it, her first reaction was to phone the government.
The shirt was sent to a police laboratory for analysis. It was discovered
to be of 99% polyester, 1% asbestos. It was a popular drip-dry model
from the nineteen fifties that had been technically banned in the
country for years. Old people and babies were exempt from the ban,
however, so the owner was let off with a warning. The shirt was returned
to her, minus the lump, which was kept by the police for their secret
underground museum, as a sort of trophy.
The curator of the underground museum was a pale man, very much deprived
of sunlight. He compensated for this with a diligence that bordered
on the insane. When he was handed the last remaining part of Monty,
he noted with enthusiasm that it still had a collar attached. On
the collar was a medallion inscribed with the words: 'If found, please
return to Mr. Norman Guppy, folk dancing enthusiast, and one time
near member of the Royal Zoological Society. Esq.' The curator shook
his head sadly and thought:
"Here I am, a mild mannered museum curator. And yet, it is I who have
discovered a vital piece of evidence. Evidence which a trained police force
has entirely overlooked. Yet again. Life is unfair and random."
Then he diligently phoned the anti-terrorist hotline.
Norman Guppy was driving around his village looking skywards when
four unmarked cars blocked him in and he was politely requested to
get out of the vehicle with his hands in the air. He was bundled
into a police van that had been cunningly hidden behind a tree and
driven to the local station for processing. Then he was flown to
America and handed over to the C.I.A's top secret U.F.O branch for
interrogation about his alleged terrorist activities. Every time
he denied he was a terrorist, they forced him to wear only one shoe.
It didn't take him long to crack.
The irony was that Norman Guppy really was a terrorist. He had half
a pound of Ammonium Nitrate all set to go. His plan was to blow up
the penguin house at London zoo. A mindless act of senseless penguin-orientated
violence was thereby averted by a crazy old lady who never bought
new shirts and was scared of aliens.
It just goes to show. You never know how things are going to pan out.
Frank is a compulsive addict in the army of frustrated writers. If he could just stop and become a moderately successful dog walker, then his life would be less erratic. But he cannot. The brain burbles. The fingers type. The dogs remain unwalked.