"Heyulp, heyulp, a magpie has just flown off with my baby,"
screamed the woman with the shiny baby.
"Stand back, I'm a trained chiropractor," offered a man
whose uterus was just that bit too prominent to be an
accident. "Just take your top off and we'll have your baby
back in no time."
The woman with the shiny baby removed her top - a big red
thing with 'Top' written on it - and looked slightly bashful
as the man with the uterus admired her grubby bra. "Do I
need to take this off too?"
"Umm... yeah, sure," said the man with the uterus, not able
to believe his luck. "Lie down and I'll realign your bones."
He was asked if she should lie on her front or on her back.
"Lie on your back. I'll be honest with you, the chances of
me being able to realign any bones at the front is minimal,
but I wouldn't be a professional chiropractor if I didn't
try every option available to me."
A couple of hours of rummaging with bones and fleshy masses
followed. They laughed, they cried, they breathed, they
snorted. "How's this getting my baby back?" asked the woman
with the shiny baby during a rest period.
"Baby? What baby? I thought you said you wanted someone to
play with your breasts," replied the man with the uterus.
"Now hold still while I crack your back." Her posture had
been so bad over the years that this cracking lasted well
over half minute, by which time she was five inches taller,
had none of the aches and pains she hadn't realised she had
before, and her baby was long gone.
"Heyulp, heyulp, a magpie flew off with my baby a couple of
hours ago," screamed the taller woman with the shiny baby.
"Stand back, I'm a human bloodhound," said the human
bloodhound with the body of a dog. "Let me get the scent and
I'll find your baby. I can follow any scent for up to
seventy two hours, over land, sea, air, or land. I'm a fair
bit better at tracking over land than I am over sea or air,
so for your sake I hope the magpie dragged your shiny baby
along the ground, preferably in such a way that his armpit
left a nice stinky trail."
"He's a baby; babies don't sweat," explained the tall woman
with the sweatless shiny baby. "And the magpie flew off with
him, which means air, not land. Can you heyulp or do I need
to find someone else to find my baby?"
"Finding someone else to find your baby sounds a little
extraneous, doesn't it?" asked the eloquent canine human
bloodhound. "One baby needs to be found, and you're willing
to do a stint of finding, but it doesn't occur to you to cut
out the middle man, and find your baby directly."
"Yes, yes, yes, that sounds very sensible, but I have no
time for common sense right now: my baby has been stolen by
a magpie, can you heyulp?"
"Not really, I was just talking to you in the hope that the
subject of breasts would arise and I could ask to see yours.
...Can I see your breasts?"
"Heyulp, heyulp, a magpie flew off with my baby a couple of
hours ago and a canine human bloodhound is trying to rape
me," screamed the taller woman with the shiny baby and a
waning sense of urgency.
The canine human bloodhound ran away and ineunt came a bear.
"Take your top off."
"No."
Exeunt.
"Hi, I'm a trained magpie tracker," explained the cool,
calm, collected, cathartic magpie tracker. "I understand
from my good friend the bear that you're missing one shiny
baby. I could help you get him back for a small fee. Now
I'll need to know all the details. Firstly, what kind of
magpie was it, an Indian or an African one?"
"Ear size?"
"Ear size."
"African."
"That's... well, that's ok. We can work with that. Now how
did your baby come to be shiny?"
"I was protecting my poor baby, my poor baaaby, from the
harmful rays of our bitterly benevolent sun. I wrapped him
in tin foil, and poked a couple of holes for nostrils."
"A baby wrapped in tin foil? I've never heard of such awful
treatment, take your top off at once. Why didn't you use
sunscreenblockcreamtanlotion?"
"I did. On his nostrils. I had to protect those from the
horrors of cancer, or to a lesser extent burning. You can
get an awful lot of sunscreenblockcreamtanlotion up a baby's
nose if you have staying power, and believe in using
controlled crying. I assure you that baby will never get
nose cancer unless he snorts diet coke."
"You poor deluded fool. What if the magpie peels your baby
of his shiny protection? Why would the magpie keep your
matt-finished baby after that? Your baby would be taken high
into the air, then adjustments for convection currents would
be made, lining the baby up so when dropped he'll land on a
big jagged rock with spikes and sharp bits. The magpie would
just be doing what magpies do in cracking open a baby to
look for shiny stuff, you can't blame the magpie for that.
And even if by some strange miscalculation by the magpie
your baby landed in the open topped pillow factory next door
to the big jagged rock with spikes and sharp bits, he would
get skin cancer or perhaps sunburn from lying unprotected."
"Apart from his nostrils."
"Man cannot survive on nostrils alone."
"Obviously you never met my uncle."
"No, obviously YOU never met MY uncle. There isn't a moment
to lose, we must run in the air on the spot for a second or
two, then shoot off screen in a cloud of smoke and that
weird noise that's really hard to write down."
Exeunt pursued by a weird noise that's really hard to write
down.
"I didn't really want to see her breasts, you understand,"
explains the bear. "I was just playing a part. I don't
usually perform these sorts of rôles: I'm a proper
Shakespearian actor, but I haven't been able to get any jobs
recently. You've got to take what you can get really. My
wife is wonderfully supportive of me, but I can see it's
getting too much for her; I don't want to give up my dream,
but I can't bear to see her under such strain. Don't you
have any idea how much a bear weighs?"