Random Tumbleweed

Random inspirations to make you smile, laugh or just plain think...

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Coup d’Enfer

Inspiration: Writing Prompt found on Facebook:

Being the devil is an elected position. However, no one ever runs for office, because no one wants the job. Everyone just keeps writing in Mickey Mouse, but he's starting to take the job a little too seriously. 

  It's dark in here. I'm not sure what's going on outside. My bodyguards hid me in this basement in what they say is a safe house. They had to drag me away from my desk when Goofy arrived in town. I guess officially I'm still in power, but what's the reality out there?

Our radio in here has reported that Goofy has already taken over the palace and taken control of most of the military. The Reapers and the Vampires have already switched sides, and only the Zombies, Ghosts and Beasts are still left. But the Zombies are frankly too stupid to use in tactical operations, their strength being in massive numbers more than skill or knowledge. Ghosts make for a good recon air force, but they can't do much themselves, concretely. As for the Beasts, sure, a lot of them have tactical importance in various areas, but they're really just a bunch of small, ultraspecific units. The Bats make for good fighter jets, but they're very vulnerable. The Bugs have good skills for tunneling and burrowing and infiltrating, but short of sending massive amounts of them, they can't achieve such good results on a macroscopic scale. And so on.

The sad truth is, without Reapers and Vampires, our forces are seriously diminished. Grim, the General of the Reaper army, is still with me. I've put him in charge of the Zombies, hoping against hope that he might be able to use them tactically. But he's a sharp cookie, that might work. I've got Aragog here with me too. I think I'll send him ahead with the Spider forces, using him as a decoy (protected by one battalion of Zombies and the Bat squadrons) while the others position themselves in the palace. But position themselves to do what? Once again, they'd have to act collectively and in a concerted way. They're well trained, but they're a new force and haven't had experience any practical experience yet. And their technology isn't quite up to scratch either. Their webs are still too fragile and too visible. It's a massive weakness.

Wait... There is one possibility that just popped into my mind. Dragons. They're very effective firebombers, devastating against living troops, but can't handle stone buildings well. Maybe combine them with... Giants, of course. A plan... I think I can come up with an effective plan with these. We should have enough. I'm distracted for a minute by a memory of the last few days. The election, once again with no candidates available, nominated me. Reluctantly, I took the post.

Now Goofy wants it, but what kind of ruler of Hell would I be if I didn't fight him to get it back? I don't want it. Then there's Minnie, and my Prime Minister Donald Duck. They are Hell-bent (quite à propos) on regaining power. But Minnie is extremely materialistic and enjoys living in that palace, and Donald is still under a ton of pressure to live up to his uncle's expectations. Having taken him under my wing during my first term, I've been educating him, hopefully with the right notions of responsibility and empathy. But I'm worried his ambition might change him. He's not ready for the top job quite yet.

"Mr. Devil, sir?"

It's General Grim.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Devil, sir, I really don't think I can achieve anything with these Zombies, sir."

No. He can't give up hope. He has to succeed.

"General, I gave you one task, and I expect you to fulfill it. With whatever means you can think of."

"But Mr. Devil, sir, they're not even able to understand instructions"

That's what I was afraid of. I did see his point. But I had high hopes in his abilities. He'd managed to turn the Reapers into a highly-trained, highly-capable elite force. I'm confident he can work his magic on Zombies.

"General Grim, you have to..." Suddenly my mind wandered back to the Dragons.

"General Grim, I'm sorry, yes, you may be right. I have a better plan."

"Sir?"

"General Grim, would you please summon the three Dragon Generals at once? Oh, and General Karkus. And Aragog, Morcelagus and the Headless Horseman. I think we'll need them too. Let's all have a war council. I have an idea."

Minutes later, everyone was present. The room was definitely feeling cramped, what with three dragons, an acromantula and a giant present.

"Gentlemen, I've had an idea which could allow us to retake the Palace quickly. I will expose it here, and you will give me your feedback on the feasibility of this plan."

All of them nodded.

"Gentlemen, we will for this assault require all of your troops. Aragog, your Spiders will infiltrate the palace for recon purposes. Headless, your ghosts will scour the palace grounds and the city for the same purpose. Detach one battalion to help relay the Spiders' information. Once all that is in place, we will wait for the right moment: when Goofy is in bed.

"Then, Aragog, I'll count on one of your elite Arachnid units to go through the palace and sting and kill all the guards present. Is that OK?"

"Of course, Mr. Devil. My Arachnids are well trained."

"Then, we'll send in the three Dragon armies. One to clear the grounds around the palace, one to keep the Vampires distracted and the third to keep the Reapers distracted. Guys, can I count on you for that?"

The three Dragon generals nodded.

"Once the grounds are cleared, Karkus will take position in the grounds with the Giants and Grim will be in front of the gates with the Zombie army. We'll send Goofy an ultimatum with one battalion of unarmed Bats. An ultimatum for him to surrender at once or be killed. Morcelagus, can your bats get out quick if he refuses and strikes back?"

"Of course, Mr. Devil."

"Great. Now for contingency plans. If he refuses, Grim will send the Zombie force to flood the palace. I'm sure they'll find him quickly enough. Karkus, your Giants and the Dragons will be prepared to swat him down if he tries to take off on that damned fool contraption of his. Are we agreed?"

A unanimous cry of "Yes, Mr. Devil, sir".

"OK then, let's prepare. The operation will begin tonight at 10. Dismissed."

OK, the plan's been exposed and agreed upon, and they've all left. I trust them to the end of... well, to the end of Hell. They will never let me down.

I take out the letter I keep in my coat. Putting it on the desk, I grab a quill and finish it:

"Too often have I been elected to this position against my will. I consider that I have now fulfilled my duty and taken back the post from my opponent. However, I must now retire from this position and leave you in charge. Donald, I know you have what it takes. Just be careful. Mickey Mouse."

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The Truth About Unicorns

Inspiration: Facebook comment threads (especially in writers’ groups) can easily get pretty far out of hand... In this one, we started discussing reactions to our fathers potentially being involved in exorcism, and one guy said he’d react the same way as if his mom decided to go unicorn hunting.

I couldn’t resist...

Version française

Oh but unicorn hunting IS real, didn't you know? It's just that it's so difficult that even when someone succeeds, they never make it back alive. If your mom were really dead set on it, she'd have to go to this one island located about 70°W 25°N, right in the middle of what's commonly known as the Bermuda Triangle. That's the only place they still exist. After millions of years of fighting horses in Eurasia and losing miserably, they fled to ever smaller areas, until they ended up limited to just that one island. Some of the last unicorns present in Eurasia include the pair that declined to board Noah's Ark (they didn’t want to mess with the horses on board), and the ones that adopted a seagoing lifestyle and eventually interbred with one species of whales, creating the narwhals. Narwhals, incidentally, have picked up the paranoid tendencies of unicorns and as a result are just as elusive.

On that island (known as Insula Cornunica), they have developed their own habits and traditions, including riderless jousting, postless ringtoss and the most intense and extreme balancing circus acts you've never heard of: one unicorn balancing by the tip of its horn on the tip of another unicorn's horn. They've developed a social structure similar to that of wolves: several herds, each with an alpha unicorn, a few betas, the females and the foals.

And they don't mess around with defense: first off, their narwhal cousins patrol the nearby waters to handle any incoming ships. They used to just ram the ships with their horns and sink them, but now with steel and titanium hulls it's harder. So they've evolved their horns into antennae, capable of broadcasting radio and radar jamming signals that will throw off any navigation equipment and disrupt other electronic devices.

Then comes the unicorn graveyard: as part of the defenses, for centuries unicorns have buried their dead under the sea, near the shore, in such a way that the horns stick out toward any incoming ships and are ready to impale them. And finally, if anyone makes it to shore, elite unicorn guards stand ready to swarm out, stampede, crush and impale them.

It took a lot of effort and delicate negotiation to be allowed onto that island and gather this information. I had to hire a team of dolphins to bring me there and talk my way past the narwhals, establishing my bona fides at least a dozen times. Then I had to stand in the shallow water for hours, naked and unarmed, with my hands out in front of me before the guards accepted that I was indeed not there to harm them. And it took weeks for them to accept me as a friend, months before I was allowed to enter their community and witness all of this. When I decided to return, I was allowed to do so in exchange for swearing to ensure their safety (the coordinates given above are fake, BTW), and their chieftain even gave me a ride back to the dolphins. I'll definitely go back again some day...

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TONGUE-TWISTER HEROINE IN NEW BID FOR SUCCESS WITH IMPROVED BUSINESS MODEL

Inspiration: On the blog @just-shower-thoughts​, I ran into this little jewel:

Sally is a terrible businesswoman. Of all places to sell sea shells, why would she do it by the sea shore? People can just pick shells up for free.

And I was inspired to write about how the famous Sally had modernized her business model. The result is a short (and less than impressive, I admit) attempt at a tongue-twisting article:

As most citizens certainly should know, Sally Jessop used to sell seashells by the seashore with her seashell stand and her sweet shy smile. Sadly, she wore her soles till her socks showed through her shoes and never achieved the success she'd sworn she'd achieve. After several seasons with her seashells secure in some secret sector of her basement, Sally's back with a vengeance, embracing the secrets and possibilities of recent advancements in business processes, tools and technology services, and promising to shore up her struggling venture. And with this, she’s addressing concerns about scores of customers just picking seashells right off the beaches and elsewhere on the seashore.

Sally's sassy sister Sasha's had a smashing success as a stunning Website and social media strategist. So with her sister's treasured assistance, Sally's stand's second wind will surely take the seashore by storm. She's secured serious services to shore up her social media presence. Now, Sally's stand's been scaled up to a shop on the seashore, where she's now specialized in selling a selection of specially hand-selected, stylishly-packaged boxes of seashells. This is specially to ensure the satisfaction of the tourist niche.

For armchair purchasers, she's now started an e-commerce shop with a sexy design and same-day shipping overseas to over sixty destinations. She's also started a charity service, where customers can share sixpence on the shilling to support and sustain budding seashell-selling schemes around the world. Her startup is set to start selling shares on the stock exchange within six short weeks. Sally's success story is seriously inspirational, and it's safe to say her investment in seashell commerce will set the stage for subsequent aspiring salespeople!

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Rabbit? Duck? Dabbit?

Inspiration: A friend posted to Facebook a 'graph' showing a figure (below) which, from different angles, can look like a rabbit or a duck, and captioned with a question about whether it was a rabbit, a duck or a dabbit. As it was more or less the Easter period, I imagined this in response.

Version française - Versión española

No, what you're looking at is a ruck, the carrying of which is the original purpose of what's still known in some places as a rucksack.

According to the Cowford English Dictionary: rucksack (noun) A special kind of backpack used in hunts to carry a specific kind of game, the ruck. Its use was common up until the 18th century, when the ruck went virtually extinct. Nowadays, the term's meaning has expanded to refer more generally to a backpack.

Cross-referencing in the Encyclopaedia Notquitebritannica: Ruck An old species of game animal, a cross between a rabbit and a duck, which was hunted for centuries, to near extinction. In fact, for all intents and purposes, the naturally occurring ruck has all but disappeared. However, there is one strange phenomenon regarding the species. Once a year, over a period of a few weeks, new rucks appear. These are the result of strange cross-breeding. Indeed, certain species of wild rabbits and ducks near Cadbury's chocolate factories in Britain have been known to engage in cross-species mating practices, usually occurring in late winter. Scientists have hypothesized that certain waste products from the factories end up in their food chain, leading to this behavior. Nowadays, because of DNA incompatibilities and probably as a result of the proximity to the factories, the resulting cross-species eggs are not usually viable as living animals, and any live hatchlings don't survive for long. In fact, in many cases the eggs have turned out to be made almost entirely of chocolate. According to leading theories, the variety of DNA combinations explains why some eggs are rather darker than others, while any additional flavors present can be attributed to the diets of the animals responsible for their conception. It has been rumored that Cadbury's chocolates are encouraging the trend by feeding the rabbits and ducks and increasing the emissions of the factories, the purpose being to generate extra profits over the Easter period, an accusation the company has always vehemently denied.

The Cadbury's Easter Egg Scandal (British BS Corporation summary from April 19th, 2016) This spring, new evidence has come to light to the effect that the areas surrounding Cadbury's chocolate factories in Britain contain abnormally large amounts of hazelnuts, almonds and other plants not native to the area. This has reignited old allegations about Cadbury's deliberately influencing the ecosystems around its factories. Militant environmentalist groups have launched massive social media campaigns to accuse the company for pollution and environmental manipulation. Swiss chocolate maker Milka took the side of the environmentalists in this debate, complaining about the 'unethical treatment of animals' this shows. Cadbury's maintain their position of staunch denial of these charges, stating that 'passing tourists in these areas have left these nuts to feed the animals'. Cadbury's have also replied with counteraccusations, saying that Milka is well known in the chocolate industry for two blatant animal rights violations the Swiss government has clearly decided not to look into: Namely, that Milka genetically engineers its cows to produce chocolate in their milk (they say this is proven by the fact that the manipulation gives the cows a bright purple color), and the fact that they hire marmots to wrap their chocolate in aluminum foil before shipping it off to retailers. Cadbury's even claims that this practice is seriously unhygienic and should be discontinued immediately. Other chocolate makers around the world have taken sides in this debate, and as of April 2016 no real result has come of it (though legal action is expected to be initiated soon by Cadbury's, and official investigations by both Swiss and British authorities are rumored to be in the works). Interestingly enough, Swedish frozen foods company Findus has chosen to take its own side by accusing both companies and has stated that they too will 'file criminal charges against both companies' for these unethical practices. This is generally perceived as a hypocritical threat, considering Findus has been involved in its own scandal a few years ago, about adding traces of horse meat to their prepared meals without properly informing consumers.

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Were the Smurfs actually real?

Inspiration: A friend of mine once posted on Facebook a picture of a sarsaparilla plant, not knowing it actually existed in real life outside the comic books about the Smurfs. I jumped at that chance and wrote this little piece.

Version française - Versión española

ACCORDING TO ONE STUDY, THE SMURFS MAY HAVE EXISTED IN MORE THAN COMIC BOOK FORM

Brussels, April 4th 2016 - Damien C.

We all know those little blue beings with their Phrygian caps, living in their mushroom huts in an enchanted forest. And their worst enemies, the wizard Gargamel and his accomplice, the felonious feline Azrael. We know them through the famous comic series by Belgian artist Pierre Culliford, better known as Peyo. What is less well known, however, is that it seems the stories told in these books isn't the result of pure imagination, but research conducted by the author among documents that he obtained somewhere.

Shortly after the death of the author, one of his associates found in his office a set of old miniature parchment documents, written in a miniature language that first needed to be deciphered. The associate, Mr. Jean-Claude Carbozooie, spent the last 24 years deciphering and understanding all of this. "It took me a while, the language itself is rather complex. Already, the alphabet contains 32 letters, not just the 26 that we know. Also, there's the added complication of one word that seems to be repeated in every way and grammatical form available. But after 24 years, I've finally managed to develop a method of analysis allowing me to read these documents. They seem to be written in Medieval Smurfish."

He does mention having had suspicions early in his work. "The repetition of this word, 'smourfe' (the medieval form of the word), at first seemed strange. Then one day, after a few months, I happened to glance at a copy of the Astrosmurf, and I made the connection. This allowed me to review my research methodology. However, because there are many pieces of the documents missing, it still took a long time to reconstruct the Smurfish language and understand the contents of the documents." One more complication that turned up during the research was the differences in syntax. You might remember in Smurf versus Smurf, when the entire village had ended up split in two over the proper syntax of the language.

Mr. Carbozooie tells us that, according to the available evidence, the documents he analyzed were none other than the memoirs of Papa Smurf, along with some long dissertations by Brainy Smurf and various anecdotes written by other members of the little community. The memoirs themselves appear to have been the inspiration behind most of Peyo's comic books. Furthermore, some pages were hard to read, owing to the fact they seem to have suffered from Jokey Smurf's favorite pastime.

Many questions are still left unanswered about this discovery and its implications. Did Mr. Peyo know of a real race of Smurfs, or did he also create and invent these documents for fun or a prank? His sister Véronique tells us more: "Even though he wrote fun stories, he never joked about his work. He would not be the kind to create a whole conspiracy theory around the existence or inexistence of the Smurfs in real life." Which leaves us with the one conclusion that will fascinate many fans and researchers: that the Smurfs may have really existed at one time.

M. W. A. Terincan, a renowned Turkish botanist, indicates that we can attempt to retrace the community by analyzing the composition of the parchment and tracking the evolution of the sarsaparilla plant (smilax aspera), which is an ingredient in the parchment itself and served as the Smurfs' main food staple. In this way, he says, "we could know in which area they lived, and might retrace their migrations." Unfortunately, this plant is very widespread on Earth, everywhere from Mexico to India via Europe and Africa. "But if we analyze the varieties present in the parchments and those mentioned in the texts through their characteristics and effects, we could narrow down the region where these creatures lived (and, who knows, maybe still live)".

During our investigation, we also tried to find traces of Gargamel's lineage. Untio now we haven't found anything very concrete, save for one German named Friedrich Gärgmeller, 68, of Worms, who told us: "There is a story in my family of one of our ancestors, in the 16th century. He claimed to have known a race of little blue men who always devastated his sarsaparilla crops, which he used abundantly for his meals as well as to help with his gout and rhumatisms. For a long time we thought he was merely referring to the Nibelungen, mythical dwarf people from an old Germanic saga, and that it was simply imaginary. But this new discovery does cast the story in a new light."

There is still much to learn about this mysterious race. When did they exist? Have they disappeared, and if yes, why? And if they haven't disappeared, where the smurf are they smurfing? It's up to other smurfers to smurf out the truth.

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Support the Sleep Impaired!

Inspiration: A friend of mine posted on Facebook an article pointing to the benefits of sleeping longer. As I myself am a rather light sleeper and an early riser, and I feel very much in the minority on this score, I had the idea to write this plea on behalf of the 'sleep impaired' people of the world. The intent was to copy the typical style of the calls for action on solidarity causes. I even threw in a few brief references to certain actual real-life news topics.

Version française - Versión española

So you think it's easy, do you, sleeping in? Just because you ladies and gentlemen are able, with little to no assistance, to sleep continuously from Sunday to Tuesday, you suddenly believe yourselves to be superior? And for us, poor us, who even after clubbing all night and eventually crashing at 5am (windows and blinds closed, alarm clocks off, phones off...) are unable to sleep beyond sunrise, what's left? Should I expect to see 'No early risers' or 'Down with morning people' signs popping up soon? Will there be such a thing as the NSF (National Sleepyheads' Front)? Will I soon have to fear for my life and my safety?

And yet if we can't sleep any more, it's not for lack of trying or because we don't want to. For a time I even worked a job where every month I had to work several night shifts: 10pm to 7am at work, then back home to crash at about 8am, and even so it was really hard to sleep properly for more than 3 hours. You see, I try to fit in, to assimilate, to build 'good' or 'patriotic' habits, but I can't. And I'm not alone in this situation. It's time we took an interest in the fate of the sleep impaired!

That's why I, on behalf of the World Sleep Impairment Support Association (WSISA), am calling for a mobilization of the masses to defend our community, to implement research programs aimed at facilitating and improving sleep, and to instate integration initiatives. For example, flexible work hours allowing early risers to arrive at work when it suits them, or pre-breakfast deals to compensate the inevitable shift in standard mealtimes. After all, we've made remarkable efforts for the visually impaired, the hearing impaired, and even the matrimonially impaired!! Is it too much to ask for a little extra effort for us sleep impaired?

Thanks for your patience and support. To take part in the Association's activities or promotion, donate or otherwise contribute, don't hesitate to visit our Website: http://www.wsisa.wtf/howtoact or call us at 1-800-SLEEP-IN (but no later than 10am)

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Pharaoh Rocher

In response to the picture below, seen on Facebook (and admittedly barely managing a groan even from me), I nevertheless felt inspired and pretended it was true. I wrote this article, suggesting ground-breaking findings were to come in the story of the world's sweetest mummy...

Version française - Versión española

BREAKING NEWS: NEW FIND BOGGLES ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND QUESTIONS MUCH OF WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT HUMAN HISTORY

Cairo, Nov. 21st. 2015 - by Damien Concordel

Egypt was a powerful kingdom of the Antiquity, known the world over for their massive monumental stone constructions, from pyramids to temples to monolithic obelisks and gigantic statues.

But until now, nobody imagined quite how powerful the kingdom was. Nobody, that is, until Ms. Soledad Lunahierro, a little-known but influential archaeologist from Spain working in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, stumbled on this one tomb with a very unusual mummy inside.

The mummy was found wrapped in a thin gold leaf shroud, 20m below any other tomb in that complex, in a chamber farther removed from all the others.

But what surprised Ms. Lunahierro wasn't the gold leaf or how far down the tomb was: indeed, preliminary analyses of the mummy indicate that, prior to mummification and burial, the body of the pharaoh was covered in a mixture of chocolate and chopped hazelnuts!

This find has stunned Ms. Lunahierro and her colleagues, and led to a massive rethinking of what we knew of Ancient Egypt, its neighbors and their economic interactions.

"Many questions remain here. The problem is that, because this challenges some of our best-known information about the ancient kingdom, it'll take that much more effort to solve the riddle. Much of what we know will have to be rebuilt and extrapolated again before we can even begin to tackle this new question." says Ms. Lunahierro.

Carbon dating has shown the mummy to be from about 3,140 BC. But until now, no evidence existed to show that trans-Sahara trade was occurring in significant amounts, nor that cocoa beans were among the traded products.

More significantly still, chocolate was thought to have been invented as a result of colonization, but this new evidence points to the fact that the Ancient Egyptians made or knew of chocolate over 4,500 years before it was introduced into Europe.

Finally, researchers the world over are utterly baffled by how this mummy is even possible, because it would involve having found a way to preserve milk-based products for over 5,000 years.

Questions abound about this issue. An expert on Antiquity trade and economics, Mr. Joseph Sweeting, tells us, "Hazelnuts can have been imported by naval trade from Anatolia, the milk was produced locally. The cocoa beans are the real anomaly here, and it'll take a lot more finds up and down the Nile river and across the Sahel to unearth traces of this antique cocoa trade."

Mystery still surrounds this find, but regardless of whether any new evidence comes up to support it, this find will undoubtedly shake up our knowledge of the history of the region.

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How the Mauritius Dodos went into hiding

It has been established that the dodo, a large flightless bird native to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, went extinct because of the colonists' overuse of the tree they fed off of. What if it were actually an attempted genocide? What if some of them had actually escaped? Inspiration: a question asked to a friend of mine about whether there are still dodos in Australia Version française - Versión española The story As it turns out, they actually banded up in a secret branch of the Freemasons, so secret even the name of the branch is unknown to the general public. This much is known to the experts. It all started when their leader, Prince Doobeedoo Dodo LXVII, decided to save what was left of his population after the onslaught of the colonists began. Indeed, a group of colonists led by Dutch sailor Gert van Drenthe, had decided to eliminate the birds who were, in his own words, 'unworthy of living on the island'. These colonists organized repeated massacres of dodo birds, raiding their nests and communities, imprisoning thousands for sport, eventually killing them. The Prince himself narrowly escaped death by hiding in a hollow tree trunk during one particularly vicious raid. Once the colonists had left, the Prince came out of hiding and gathered together the hundred or so remaining dodos. Together they decided to mount a counteroffensive and free their comrades from the colonists' prison. After weeks of preparation, the operation was a partial success: two thousand dodos were freed, but before everyone was out the colonists realized what was going on and killed the remaining ones. Van Drenthe swore to kill Prince Doobeedoo himself, and organized repeated searches of the island. The prince and his people, meanwhile, had organized themselves into underground communities, frequently raiding isolated colonist farms to destroy crops in a vast intimidation campaign. These operations were carried out like clockwork, and before any of the colonists could wake up to what was happening the dodos were already back in their underground homes. Through these attacks the dodos were able to force the colonists out of a sizeable area that they could live in safely. That is when Van Drenthe decided to hire hundreds of foxes, to try and flush out and kill the remaining dodos. He contracted an alliance with King Vulpo VII of Neofoxia (a distant ancestor to Rupert Murdoch) to scout out the dodos' nests and raid them. The Prince, hearing of this plan, then finally decided to save his people. With the help of a local group of Freemason possums led by Marsupias III, he and his people managed to infiltrate Port de Warwick and steal three ships. Two of these ships left ostentatiously, one bound for India and the other for Africa, but were only crewed by possums. The third, rumored to have sunk just off Port de Warwick, had actually been hidden at night in a nearby bay to wait. When he heard of all of this, Van Drenthe sent the remainder of the local fleet after the two boats that had left. But by the time he had caught up with them and discovered the trick, the dodos had already escaped with the third ship under cover of night. After two months on the Indian Ocean they finally reached the eastern coast of Australia, where they met up with Marsupias' distant cousin Canguros IV, leader of a tribe of kangaroos, also Freemasons. They took the dodos in. They gave them new identities and moved them around quite a bit over the following years, but few details remain. The last thing known of this community of dodos are traces of a dodo settlement from 1835, near modern-day Carnarvon, that indicate that all dodos had left in a hurry. No further trace of them has been found since, but there is speculation that they are still in Australia somewhere, still protected by their kangaroo helpers. Rumor has it there are several possible locations for the community, all of them well hidden and guarded by vicious two-meter-tall Red Kangaroos (the Canguros dynasty's elite security force), with orders to kill any intruder on sight. Most of this story comes from Van Drenthe's diary and records in Port de Warwick, as well as the memoirs of Vulpo and Marsupias. Some extra details of the happenings on Mauritius island itself were found in documents Prince Doobeedoo left in his original settlement on the island. As for the Prince himself, virtually nothing is known of what happened to him. His crown was found in the Carnarvon settlement, but not the hereditary scepter which was the true symbol of his dynasty's power. The crown was intact, which is significant: indeed, when a dodo prince died of other than natural causes, his crown was traditionally broken into two pieces. This has led experts to believe that, although he survived the move to Australia, he eventually died there peacefully, his body likely cremated as was the custom. This, combined with the absence of the scepter, suggests the dynasty continued through the main bloodline, but no trace of that has been found to date.