Dave

The Shy Assassin and I are playing a writing game. We take turns sending each other a sentence to serve as a launch point to a poem or short story. Here is my take on the sentence he sent me.
BTW, check out his blog at the link. Great stuff!

Hannah Heythrop was very surprised when she woke up one morning to find a giraffe in her bedroom. Normally, the zoo animals kept to the kitchen and bathrooms, for food and water, or the two guest bedrooms. And the giraffe preferred the porch because of its vaulted ceilings. They were smart enough to understand that her room was off limits. A girl needs to have boundaries, not to mention a bit of privacy now and then. The only conclusion Hannah could draw was that something unusual was afoot. 

She pulled back the covers, pulled on her dressing gown, and giving Oscar a pat on the flank, set off to investigate.

First, she poked her head into the hall bathroom and confirmed that the penguins, Missy and Zack, were splashing in the tub. Splashing and crapping. Hannah sighed. Sometimes it felt as if she spent the better part of her life cleaning up all manners of excrement.

Next, she checked the herbivore bedroom, did a quick nose count (all accounted for!) and moved on to the carnivores.  Another nose count, this time coming up one nose short: Lulu was missing. 

That in and of itself wasn’t terribly unusual. The ocelot, being largely solitary, preferred her own company and would frequently go into hiding for protracted periods of time. Hannah proceeded to check all her usual hiding places and finally found her behind the potted rubber tree plant in the living room. She gave her a gentle stroke under the chin, and Lulu purred and blinked happy cat-eyes at her.

Finally, the kitchen yielded the solution to the mystery: The anaconda was coiled, guiltily, beneath the table, his abdomen significantly extended, about the size of….OMG! Where was Leo? She’d been so busy counting zoo noses, she’d utterly forgotten her own cat! 

“Dave!” She shrieked, “How could you!”