The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 642

"How sure are you that it's safe?" Smush asked Mogey as the two pals gazed up at their new tree fort. Mogey had spent fifty painstaking minutes assembling the building - which took up the top third of a mammoth redwood tree out back - out of particle board, packing tape, and that multicolored clay that you buy in arts & crafts stores. Mogey loved arts & crafts stores.

"I'm positive," Mogey replied. "There's a better chance of someone not smoking a pipe calling you 'old bean,' than of this tree fort falling apart. Has someone not smoking a pipe ever called you 'old bean?'"

"Of course not - what would he tap thoughtfully on his chin? His walking stick? I think not."

"Precisely," Mogey said. "Now watch me: I'll show you just how safe this fort is." He leapt onto the rope ladder with the grace of a baby whose diaper is too tight and began to climb. When he reached the halfway point of the 80-foot climb, the tree fort completely imploded, showering the area with potato chips and dippin' sauces, and sending the ladder plummeting earthward.

Luckily, the globose Mogey was an extremely bouncy fellow, and he absorbed the force of his fall with only a mild look of annoyance as he rebounded back into the air. Impatiently, he waited for the bouncing to subside while Smush scurried around the forest floor in search of chip crumbs.

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 641

Mogey and Smush met for the first time in the crowded cafeteria of St. Pumpernickel's School for Troublesome Lads on a gloomy day long ago. Smush was about to chomp into a pickled beef sandwich when he heard a grunt across the table that - at first - he assumed had come from a stray pygmy hippopotamus, of which St. Pumpernickel's had many.

"Oy," said the grunter, who was of course our old friend Mogey, "I'll trade you this jar of cabbage'n'stuff for your fruit-by-the-foot."

Smush paused mid-bite, a feat more uncommon than lightning striking twice and then issuing a formal apology for overzealousness.

"How about my cold guinea fowl leg for your butterscotch pudding cup?" he replied.

And so ensued a half hour of fierce negotiations, mediated by a stern, but fair, third party: Billy "Li'l Baaaa" Goatherd. When it was over, Smush had acquired two strips of bacon, a magnetic checkers board, a pile of candy corns, a pog slammer shaped like a cobra skull, and a hefty slice of turkey pie. Mogey, on the other hand, had gained the fruit-by-the-foot, a year-old Highlights magazine, the alleged key to the school's alleged chicken coop, and some jerky of unknown origins.

"I believe this is the beginning of a long and prosperous friendship," said Smush with a wide grin.

"Whatsat?" Mogey sputtered. He glanced up quickly, then resumed trying to suck butterscotch pudding through a rolled up fruit-by-the-foot.