"Here... let me take a look!" blurted out Rear. He had always suspected that his advanced degree in marine biology would be useful one day, but aside from knowing which mussels were good eatin', and which ones were better left to the scavengers, he had never put his knowledge to the test.
Acting quickly, Rear started throwing open cabinet doors and tossing items out onto the floor. "Help me out here!" he yelled, "We don't have much time! I need ten pounds of kosher salt, a bottle of iodine, twenty gallons of distilled water, and one big-ass pot!"
Bugs Pond was the first to join in the fray and began tearing cabinet doors right off their hinges with his amazing girlie arms. "I got one!" he yelled triumphantly as he hoisted a gigantic forty-gallon mixing bowl aloft. Seconds later, Iggy had joined the search also, running across the counters and madly snaking his tongue in and out around the various jars and boxes in the upper cabinets. Within minutes he too yelled "I've got the salt!!!" and pulled an oversized blue and white box down out of a cabinet.
Rear ran to the back pantry where he found (as luck would have it) a whole case of iodine that had been ordered by the Society of Charitable but Hopelessly Insane Soccer Moms (SCHISM) who had reserved the Black Corporation's indoor soccer bubble for this weekend's finals between the West Springfield Wiener-dogs and the local favorite, Blackstone Valley Black Angus'.
Puffing a little from all the running, and still slightly weakened by the loss of blood several episodes ago, Rear hurtled back into the main kitchen with his find and after a quick assessment realized he had everything he needed except the distilled water.
"What? no water??!" He hollered at Bugs and Iggy. Bugs shrugged his shoulders as if to say "I dunno" while Iggy continued flicking his tongue into previously unexplored drawers and cabinets. Meanwhile, Rear frantically pulled the giant mixing bowl across the floor to the giant stand mixer and started dumping salt and bottled iodine into it.
"I know!" Piped up Bugs, "there's a sink with a sprayer right next to the mixer. I'm sure the hose would be long enough to reach the mixing bowl. We can use that to fill the-"
"WHAT ARE YOU NUTS??!" Screamed Rear. "Why even the most junior amateur fishkeeper knows that the chlorine levels in tap water would burn out Octopussy's gill filaments in a matter of minutes leaving him incapable of absorbing life-giving oxygen!"
"Well don't yell at ME about it!" retorted Bugs flexing his girlie arms in consternation, "YOU'RE the one with the advanced degree in marine Biology..."
Suddenly the room fell silent as Bugs considered this greatest of faux pas he had just made and while at the same time Rear realized that his was not a happenstance meeting with this Bugs Pond who had obviously done some serious DD into Rear's past and perhaps had some ulterior motive for making his acquaintance.
Just as suddenly, a huge crashing sound was heard in the corner of the kitchen where Iggy the Iguana had used his prehensile tail to clear away an entire floor-to-ceiling cabinet of dry goods to reveal a small distillery hidden away in the back of a secret pantry with gallon after gallon of bottled distilled water standing on racks around the dimly lit room.
"That's odd" thought both Rear and Bugs in unison.
"Now why would there be a distillery in the corporate headquarters kitchen?" asked Bugs aloud.
"Never mind that now!" yelled Rear excitedly, "Let's get this thing going, we've got a life to save!"
And sure enough, at that very moment, Octopussy was edging ever closer to the edge (ack! I kill myself sometimes) and would soon either slip into the darkness of death's grip, or slip off the table he was sprawled out on.
Knowing there was no time to lose, Iggy, Bugs Pond (our hero) and Rear formed a loose chain and started passing bottles over to the giant standmixer like a bucket brigade in days of yore.
"18.... glug! glug! glug! 19... glug! glug! glug! 20! glug! glug! glug! Okay!" yelled Rear, "let's fire this thing up, we need mixing and aeration." He reached for the switch at the top of the mixer's giant motor unit and flicked it on.
All the commotion in the kitchen had attracted the attention of Muffy who stepped in out of the cafeteria and gasped when she saw the pale flaccid figure of octopussy layed out on the table in jumbled disarray. Precious too, always game for some arithmetical action had been lured into the kitchen when she heard Rear counting out the gallons of distilled water and was disappointed that she had arrived too late for the water count but soon satisfied herself by counting the number of spilled boxes, jars, and tins of dry goods the trio of lifesavers had strewn around the room during their frantic search.
Muffy carefully skirted the table where Octopussy lay and wrinkled her nose at the day-old seafood odor he was starting to emit. She walked over to Rear and peered over his shoulder at the giant undulating paddles in the huge mixing bowl (which reminded her of a "present" she had gotten from the visiting Chef back at the orphanage when she was little, but more about that later...).
"Ugh!" grunted Muffy, "what's that smell??"
"Oh don't worry," replied Rear, he'll be okay soon, he's just been out of the water too long and is getting dehydrated (actually, Rear couldn't smell Octopussy and frankly, couldn't smell anything since that time in seventh grade when, on a dare from one of his mates at military school, he sniffed the gym socks at the bottom of all the lockers in the Rugby team's locker room. He had been laid up for weeks afterwards and doctors correctly diagnosed that he would never be able to smell again, but he still felt it was worth it to see the look on his friend's face when he had to hand over the coveted Iron Maiden concert tickets.)
"No you idiot!" Said Muffy with more assertion than she realized she was capable of, "Not Octopussy. I'm talking about this soup you're mixing up. It smells like... like..." Muffy leaned over the giant mixing bowl, and took a deep breath then paused for a minute to let her plodding brain catch up with the information her nose was sending to it. The smell was familiar and reminded her of when she was a little girl and took day trips with the others from the orphanage to the beach. She could almost feel the hot sun beating down on her lithe body as she caroused through the waves. She could almost feel the way that boy under the boardwalk had rubbed her down with suntan lotion, telling her "Hey. This is the way EVERYBODY puts on suntan lotion, I swear..." She could almost smell the salt in the air as the pure clean seawater sprayed up across- "Hey! I know!" She piped up gleefully, "It smells just like the bottle of Old-Sheepdip Kentucky Bourbon that me and that other girl from the orphanage used to bring with us on day trips to the beach!"
Rear instantly realized the implications of Muffy's nasal samplings. The bottled "water" wasn't distilled water at all and now he had concocted a 140 proof synthetic seawater mix to try and save Octopussy's life.
"Well we don't have any choice now" said Rear with finality as he shut off the giant standmixer. "I guess it's time to find out if octopussy can hold his liquor," and with that, he and Bugs grasped Octopussy by his shriveled tentacles while Muffy cradled his shrunken body sac and the three of them unceremoniously dumped him into the bubbling mix while Iggy and Precious looked on (Precious started counting the bubbles but was too distraught to continue after the first dozen or so. As it was, her mind was still reeling from Muffy's earlier revelations about the orphanage and the bottle of Old-Sheepdip at the beach... could it really be?)
The whole party stood uncomfortably around the kitchen and even Rusty and PEST Control had come in to see where everybody had disappeared to. Five minutes passed and still the caldron of intoxicating synthetic seawater bubbled. Ten minutes... twenty minutes... Rear was starting to doubt the value of his advanced degree in Marine Biology, when suddenly... |
