Day 1: The Kidnapping

Well, I aged 20 years, but I did survive the Wombat Invasion.

In my last post, I told you Common Wombat would be staying at my house for the weekend. I won't lie to you, I was scared shitless. Surprisingly, though, the weekend passed without the loss of a single human life--I consider that a success. However, my neighbors did object strenuously to having this miscreant near their homes. They didn't care for the sight of him stumbling around the neighborhood in nothing but a filthy, open bathrobe, chain-smoking and making passes at the neighborhood children. They called the police no fewer than 6 times to report a foul odor emanating from my house. And when 18 of the neighborhood pets went missing in a single evening, they all seemed to agree he had a hand in it.

Jake seemed to really take to him, though. The good news: Wombat potty-trained him in one weekend, which is impressive considering Jake is only 20 months old. The bad news: Now Jake sits on the toilet for an hour at a stretch, reading Hustler magazines and cursing at no one in particular, and smearing the walls with misogynistic graffitti.

I knew you’d want to see some photos from the weekend, so I have several to share—some were taken with my digital camera, some were taken by police investigators. In this first one, a trained hostage negotiator might notice that something’s definitely amiss. Here we are in the abandoned warehouse where Wombat dragged me, kicking and screaming, and proceeded to hold me hostage for a time, in an attempt to elicit an astronomical ransom from my panicked loved ones.You can see the meanacing grip he has on my now-bruised arm. You can see my brave smile as I try to broadcast to my family that I am so far unharmed. What you can’t see is the gun Wombat is jamming into my ribs under the table—nor the suspicious brown stain on the back of his pants. All ended well, though, when, just moments after this picture was taken, I shouted, “Look! A balloon!” which caused Wombat to spin around, delighted, searching for said balloon, giving me an opportunity to take the gun from him and pistol whip him unconscious. Later, I forgave him for kidnapping me, and he forgave me for pistol whipping him, and after I forced him to change into a clean pair of pants, a group of us went to a martini bar for drinks.

Much, much more happened, but I’m still too exhausted to recount it all in one sitting. Stay tuned for parts 2 through 9,267 of The Stench That Ruined My Wall-To-Wall Carpeting….