The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 510

"Doughnut machine repairman!"

Never had three words sounded to sweet to Smush (although "chicken fried cheese" was a close second). He bustled down the hall at his fastest bustle when he heard the repairman at the front door.

"Oh thank heavens!" Smush cried, embracing the very surprised-looking repairman on the front steps. "Our doughnut machine's been broken almost a full day! I do believe the gears may be jammed with peanut butter and chocolate ganache."

Smush showed the repairman their piteously wounded doughnut machine, then led him around back, where Mogey was playing solitaire and mournfully munching a stale bagel.

"Now Mogey and I are the meddling sort," Smush said, "and we'll probably make your job twice as difficult if we're not distracted somehow. So I'm going to turn on this sprinkler, which should keep us well-occupied as you fix our doughnut-maker."

"You know, Smush, I can hear everything you're saying. A silly old sprinkler isn't going to BAAHAHAHA!" Mogey collapsed into a fit of giggles as the sprinkler came on and began sweeping back and forth over the lawn.

"So should I..." the doughnut machine repairman began to ask, but he realized Smush was no longer standing next to him. Smush was rolling around beneath the sprinkler, laughing like a ticklish Frenchman.

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 509

On a typical morning in the fantastic land of Fleegelflugal, Mogey and Smush rode their Powerwheels trucks through a field of whistling teakettles, a forest of bright purple trees, and a very brief shower of fingerling potatoes. As they crested a hill they encountered a horse who had what appeared to be an ear of corn strapped to its head.

"Nay!" the horse hollered, in possibly the least intimidating voice of all time. "Nay! NAY!"

"Excuse me, sir," Smush said, addressing the horse, "but can we help you somehow?"

"Yes!" the horse replied. "I'm a unicorn and you're in my territory. And I don't like it! Not one bit."

"Don't unicorns have horns?" Mogey asked.

"Common misconception," the unicorn responded. "Those ugly, one horn things are actually uni-horns. Every real unicorn has a big ol' ear of corn growing out of his forehead."

"I see," Smush said. "Well it's much less scary than a horn, isn't it?"

"It may be now," said the unicorn, "but if I pop these corn kernels, this bad boy will nearly triple in size! Now I don't suppose either of you gentlemen has a hair dryer I could borrow for a moment?"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 508

Mogey and Smush had been working as snailers for two weeks. It was a good job: the pay was fair, they got to work outdoors, and the foreman sang selections from Sweating to the Oldies all the live long day.

One day, as it came time for lunch, the men assembled in front of a large tureen on the back of the wagon to receive their daily rations.

"Snail chowder?" the foreman offered when Mogey's turn came round.

"Snail chowder!" Mogey shrieked girlishly. "You don't meant to tell me that all these snails we've been gathering are for eatin, do you?"

"Liver n' henfeathers, Mogey," Smush muttered behind him. "Of all the things to say...."

"Well of course they're for eatin, lad," the foreman said. "What'd you think they was for?"

"I always thought people brought the snails into work with them, because they're so slow, see?" Mogey stated matter-of-factly. "That way they look like they're working harder by comparison. Sort of like what we do with Chubby Eddy over there."

"Phew," Chubby Eddy said, mopping his brow as he finally returned from his 10 AM coffee break. "What a day, what a day, what a day."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 507

On an evening as clear and cool as a mildly refrigerated jellyfish, Mogey and Smush found themselves out in their field weeding the beans. An infestation of Puerto Rican Mudflup - an insidious weed that could spring up in a matter of hours - threatened to wipe out their entire bean crop if they didn't get rid of it. And without beans, Mogey and Smush would be unable to make the mainstay of their entire diet: baked beans.

So the two pals weeded and weeded til they could weed no more. Finally they had reached the point of exhaustion and were near collapsing when they heard a loud, gravelly voice.

"Looks like you boys need a professional weeder."

The voice belonged to a tall, slim man sitting atop the rock wall with one of his feet propped up beside him and the other dangling toward the ground. He wore an old straw hat that hid his face, and a long piece of uncooked spaghetti was clenched firmly between his teeth.

"Wh-Who are you, mister?" Smush stammered as Mogey shrank toward him in fear.

"The name's Tater," the man replied, pushing back his hat, "Buck Tater."

"Well since you asked," Smush said, "we could use a man who knows how to pull some weeds. Care to join us?"

"Right on," Buck Tater answered, hopping down from the rock wall to inspect the field. "Now what you've got here is a serious case of Puerto Rican Mudflup," he continued. "And if there's one thing I know about Puerto Rican Mudflup, it's that they love ukulele music."

With that, Buck Tater produced a ukulele as if by magic and began to strum it lazily. One by one, the weeds loosened from the ground, finally popping out of the ground with a sound like a cork coming out of a bottle. Using their roots as legs, the Puerto Rican Mudflups walked out of the beanrows and followed Buck Tater as he walked toward the rising sun with a smile on his face and a ukulele in his arms.

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 506

Mogey and Smush's great dream in life since they were young rapscallions was to own a fountain. So they had set out to make their fortunes selling hedgehog hats, with the final goal of the fountain always in their minds. The hedgehog hats were made for hedgehogs, not from hedgehogs, a distinction Mogey and Smush found themselves spending the overwhelming majority of their time explaining. There was not much demand for hedgehog hats, you see, but there was also not much competition.

Finally, on a sunny afternoon in late October, Mogey and Smush had sold just enough hedgehog hats to afford a grand fountain for their front garden, so they asked Vasily Graham, the fountain man, to come out and take a look.

"Aye, you've got a plenty strong foundation here for a double decker fountain if I just put down a bit of flagstone," Vasily Graham said.

"Where would the cheese be stored?" Mogey asked. His question was flatly ignored by both Smush and Vasily.

"And you could bury the hose?" Smush queried.

"Oh easily, yes," said Vasily. "Now will you be wanting to run this in the Winter?"

"How often will we need to restock the cheese?" Mogey asked. Again he was dismissed outright.

"In the Winter, oh yes," Smush replied to Vasily. "How difficult is that to do?"

"I DEMAND TO KNOW ABOUT THE CHEESE!" Mogey shouted finally.

"What in the world are you on about?" Smush asked. "What cheese?"

"The cheese that's going to come out of the fountain," Mogey said, looking slightly crestfallen. "We're not just getting in ordinary old water fountain, are we? After all these years, I just assumed it was a cheese fountain we were after."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 505

One afternoon, Mogey and Smush had one of their rip-roarin'-est, name-calling-est, eye-poking-est arguments of all time. The altercation had begun when Smush beat Mogey in a hard fought game of Pretty Pretty Princess, after which Mogey had called Smush a cheat and belittled his collection of Snapple caps. It had turned ugly then, because Smush, normally so even-tempered, would not have the good name of his Snapple cap collection dragged through the mud.

They had both stormed off to their respective bedchambers and hadn't seen each other for three whole days, when they encountered one another in the parlor.

"Good day, Mogey," Smush ventured in a stilted voice, glancing up from his newspaper.

"Good day to you as well, Smush," Mogey replied. "How are you this fine afternoon?"

"Just peachy," Smush said, to which Mogey muttered something in return. "What was that?" Smush demanded.

"I said, 'you wish,'" Mogey repeated haughtily, knowing in his heart that his next few words would undoubtedly lead to fisticuffs. "'Peachy?' Ha! More like nectarine-y. I saw you try to grow a moustache last year and your face stayed smoother than the beats of Big Tumbo Rasta-man, the childlike reggae sensation."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 504

One day, Mogey and Smush were waddling - and, on downhill sections of the path, rolling - to the fruit roll-up stand in town, when they were stopped dead in their tracks by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The T-Rex was twenty feet tall if he was an inch, and he turned toward Mogey and Smush, baring teeth as long as six nutter butters laid end to end.

Mogey and Smush could tell from the glint in the T-Rex's eye and and the drool on his chin that the monster had plans to devour our pudgy heroes. Gaping his mouth impossibly wide, the T-rex emitted a bone-chilling, bloodcurdling, near-appetite reducing roar.

"Cut that out!" Mogey shouted back at the beast. "You're going to be pretty dino-sore tomorrow if you don't quit that roaring!"

The T-Rex clamped his mouth shut in surprise, then narrowed his eyes menacingly.

"Did you just come up with a pun mocking the creature that's about to eat us?" Smush muttered.

Suddenly the dinosaur threw back his head and began to emit a loud, barking laugh. He laughed so long and so hard that he eventually collapsed onto his back, waving his tiny arms in fits of hilarity.

"Tyrannosauruses love puns, Smush, everyone knows that," Mogey said confidently as he walked around the laughing T-Rex and began once more to make his way toward the fruit roll-up stand. "Honestly, you should get your nose out of the funny pages and into a history book once in a while."