On a morning like any other, on a day identical to those before and after it, a worm that looked pretty much the same as all the other worms was awoken by a bird’s beak crashing through the soil next to it, missing its plump, delicious body by mere millimetres.
“That’s it,” decided the worm. “I’ve had it. I’m going to destroy the world.”
The bird sneezed out a sharp, birdy laugh and flew away, too amused to finish breakfast.
Big mistake.
The worm turned the plan over and over inside its brain; constantly, unceasingly. It didn’t take too long – it was a small brain, but it wasn’t a very big plan. So it buckled down, gritted its lack of teeth, and dug in.
Then in farther.
The bird came back for a late breakfast, but found only barest bedrock. It circled in confusion for a while, then went home.
The tree its nest sat in was toppled, roots in the air. Below it was bare bedrock.
It went to its nearest birdfeeder to recuperate, only to find that it had fallen from its bracket and shattered when the house dropped dozens of meters down to bedrock.
The bird sagged in defeat, stopped flying, and smacked beak-first into the de-soiled bedrock of the earth, defeated.
“Excellent!” cheered the worm as it devoured the last scrap of earth left on the planet. “That’ll show them!”
Then a very expensive military drone dropped a bomb near it.
“You too!?” cried the worm in anguish as the horizon filled with missiles, tanks, and mechanized infantry. The world’s armies were literally unable to return to the soil of home, and had come to collect it. Left without options, the worm turned and dug and chewed its way into the bedrock, deeper still into the molten mantle, which popped like a balloon and caused all the warm goo inside the earth to leak out into space like a punctured jelly timbit.
“Hooray!” yelled the worm in triumph. “I’ve destroyed the world! And now, the universe!”
And the worm divided itself over and over into pieces until the universe was statistically more earthworms than anything else.
The moral of the story is that you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it.
***
It was a fine, fulfilling fall day. The nuts were ready, the tubers were swollen, the deer were fat, and the fish were swimming in the streams.
So the bear was out, putting all of them in his face, which had his mouth, which ate them.
He dug up mushrooms and roots, he grubbed for grubs, he chewed carrion, he gnawed on bones, he dug up burrows and bolted their owners, he flushed grouse and snatched them from the air and swallowed them whole, he gulped the last of the berry crops, he speared sixty salmon one after another and ate them all headfirst, then he took a long, long, long drink from the river and passed out.
Then he woke up and did it again.
And again.
And again.
And on the fifth day he was running out of options, but he was still ravenous. He chewed on saplings for sap and gum, he swallowed stripped-bare berry-bushes, he plucked frogs from the ponds and cracked open turtles with his molars, he snuffled through drifts of leaves to eat slugs, he picked up and carried away a very startled hiker before messily consuming him, he browsed on some of the more succulent-looking grasses, and when he stumbled across a somewhat smaller and sleepier bear trying his hand at fishing he ate him too and passed out.
The next day he was still hungry.
He broke into hibernaculums and bit deep into his fellow bears’ plump flanks, he hoovered up the autumn leaves that carpeted the forest floor, he uprooted trees and swallowed them whole, he broke into cars and ate the seat lining and the seats and the steering wheels and the cars themselves, he drank the river dry and chewed up the riverbed, he slurped the misty air dry of moisture and sucked down the clouds, he gnawed the soil free of clay, loam, and dirt, and finally he devoured first his den and then himself down to the very last tufts of fur and lumps of fatty tissue.
Then he was ready for winter.
The moral of the story is that planning ahead for hard times is only sensible.
***
Dog was a good dog. It knew this to be true, for its master told it so. Good dog. Best dog. Good dog. Good boy. Best boy. This was especially true when dog brought its master sticks. Dog didn’t know why its master wanted sticks but it was very happy that it made master happy, and dog being happy made master happy too so everything was wonderful and everyone was happy and everything was even more wonderful and everyone was even more happy and so on and on and on oh my dog.
But one day, as dog was retrieving its stick, it saw a most unusual sight in the dog park for dogs: a dog that was not looking for a stick.
“Stick?” inquired dog.
The dog looked at dog blankly.
“Stick!” informed dog. The dog seemed puzzled, so dog did a most generous and noble self-sacrificing thing: it threw its stick over to the dog, so that it too may know the joy of returning a stick.
The dog stared at it.
“Get it!” instructed dog. The dog picked the stick up, lips moving with exaggerated care, then stood there.
“Bring it!” ordered dog. The dog carefully, gingerly, cautiously approached dog, tail held somewhere between a cringe and a growl and a wag.
“Drop it!” said dog. Master was somewhere in the distance making frustrated sounds, but for once dog knew a higher calling: it was bringing the light of stick to the uninitiated.
The dog paused. This was the hardest part, dog knew. But dog believed in the dog. It believed with such vibrancy and strength that it shook the very skies and settled in the earth. If dog could do it, this dog could do it.
“Drop it!” said dog to the dog. “Drop it! Give!”
The dog dropped the stick, and dog seized it.
“Good boy!” said dog, and the dog wagged. Then dog ran back to its master, and forgot about it.
The next day the dog was there again, but this time it wasn’t idle: it was waiting. Waiting for dog. Waiting for the stick.
“Stick!” said dog.
The dog gazed imploringly, and so dog took pity on it again and threw the stick for it.
“Bring it! Drop it! Good dog!”
And so it went the next day, and the next, but on the next day after the next day after the next day the dog did not want to drop it or give it no matter how many times dog demanded, and without thinking or stopping or even considering the metaphysical consequences dog deployed the ultimate weapon.
“BAD DOG.”
The dog’s entire body recoiled in self-revulsion of the very greatest kind and almost without conscious will it dropped the stick, which dog reclaimed.
“Good,” said dog, but shortly, so the dog knew it was on thin ice. “Sit!”
The dog sat.
“Down!” said dog
The dog laid down, eyes wide and anxious.
“Roll over!” and the dog rolled over.
“Sit!” and the dog sat up again.
“Shake!” and the dog proffered its paw, trembling with anticipation, and without thought dog took up the dog’s grasp paw to paw, master to dog, accepted the pact of domestication, and caused the entire universe to immediately crash on the spot.
The moral of the story is that dogs are nothing but trouble.