The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume L

Part I:

One early, early morning--perhaps it was even quarter to 7--Mogey and Smush awoke at the very same time. Now this wasn't the first time something of that nature had happened. There was, of course, the time they'd decided to split a fourth chimichurra from a street vendor named Emilio, and the food poisoning had struck them both simulaneously. There was the time they'd agreed to meet at the ice box at 12:01 AM to enjoy Welch's Juice Pops in honor of St. Bertram's Day. And who could forget the great squirrel stampede of '41, an event to which their home had borne extremely close witness.

On this morning, however, Mogey and Smush had awoken for a completely different reason. A train whistle had sounded just outside their house. In Mogey and Smush's experience, a train whistle was normally attached to a train, and, also in their experience, there was no train just outside their house.

So Mogey and Smush both stumbled from their respective hammocks and dashed to the veranda. Sure enough, smack dab in the middle of their back garden was a monstrous locomotive trundling along on tracks that had been built right through Smush's prize-winning petunias.

"Where did this train come from?" Smush yelled to no one in particular. A sooty-looking conductor stuck his head out the side window and looked around until he caught sight of Mogey and Smush.

"Just put in last night!" he said. "This here's the mango train from Calamoor...should be another one comin' about every two hours!"

"My word..." Mogey said, looking at Smush in mortal fear. "We'll never get a solid two and a half hour nap in again! What's to be done?"


Part II:

When last we left our heroes they were in the most peculiar conundrum of having a locomotive steaming through their back garden. A locomotive that hadn't been there before.

"Well," said Smush judiciously, "there are any number of ways we could handle this sitch-ee-ation."

"I know one!" Mogey shouted overjoyously. "I noticed the first train didn't have a cowcatcher on the front. If we go get Lemuel "The Buffalo" Barker over here and have him stand on the tracks, the train might get derailed. At the very least it'd be a very uncomfortable ride for a few seconds."

"That's a mighty fine plan, Mogey," Smush said, "except we wouldn't have Lemuel "The Buffalo" Barker to play on our Buck Buck team any longer. But we'll call that Way Number One. May I propose as Way Number Two that we pelt the engineer with all those funky cabbages that are starting to stink up the root cellar?"

"That might work," said Mogey, "but then what would we eat for dinner tonight?"

"True, true," said Smush with a sigh. Then an idea popped into his head like a spider monkey popping into a fig tree. That is to say, very loudly. "I've got it!" he yelled. "It's a plan so possible that it just might work." Mogey looked at him with great anticipation. "Way Number Three:" Smush said, "we let the train stay, but each night we snag a piece or two of cargo for our supper. It wouldn't really be like stealing because, well, they crushed my petunias for goodness sakes. I've already had 3 of the mangos that rolled off the first train...delicious!"

Before Mogey could respond, another train rumbled around the bend pulling a car from which eminated the most delicious combination of moos, oinks, and buhgocks either of them had ever heard.

"By gum you're right," Mogey said, licking his chops, "this train could be the greatest thing that's ever happened to us."