Spring was turning to summer in the Hundred Acre Wood, and a million new green leaves rustled in the warm breeze that set the carpet of flowers below dancing. Up in a sky of the purest blue the larks sang, and down in his pretty little house, with its quaint curtains and welcoming bell-pull, Piglet knelt hunched over his toilet, riding out the dry heaves.
”It’s a funny thing,” he said to Pooh Bear, who was sitting on the edge of the bath fishing in his ear with a cotton bud, ”but I never thought it would come to this. I mean, you hear about it, but you always say ‘It won’t happen to me.’ Don’t you?”
”I don’t know,” said Pooh. ”Do I?”
”Oh Pooh!” cried Piglet, tears welling. ”I’m so frightened, I think I might die.” He put his little face in his tiny trotters, and wept until Kanga came bustling through from the kitchen, carrying tea and scones.
”There there, you poor little pink bastard,” she cooed, stroking Piglet’s head with a faintly dirty paw and giving Pooh a fiercely maternal glare. ”No wonder the pint-sized porker’s shitting bricks. Culling, they call it. Bloody buggering murder is more like it. Bastards. Here, chook, try and have some tea. I’ve put a slash of beer with it. Calms the nerves.”
The teacup rattled in the saucer as Piglet sipped weakly, looking hopelessly up into the kind dark eyes of his dear friend Pooh. ”Pooh?” he squeaked, ”you won’t let them take me, will you?”
”Who?” said Pooh, switching the cotton bud to his other ear.
”The … the people,” sobbed Piglet. ”You’ll tell them, won’t you Pooh? You’ll tell them I don’t have Classic Swine Fever, won’t you ?”
”Classic my proudly Australian arse,” said Kanga. ”Pardon my French. Drink your tea, love. It’s going flat.”
They jumped as a slurred voice echoed down the passage outside: Rabbit had let himself in again; although this time he’d had the courtesy to pick the lock on the front door, leaving the recently mended bedroom window intact for now.
”Have you heard?” he croaked through his wrecked throat, coming into the light. Kanga discreetly covered her nose, and Pooh stopped mining his ear. Rabbit’s crystal meth habit had clearly become worse, and his eyes — bloodshot and blind since his visit to the Laboratory where they’d surgically removed his eyelids to test soap for babies — were flickering back and forth alarmingly. ”Have you heard? They’ve butchered 40 000 pigs!” He laughed until he began to cough, and stopped when something rather like bloody butter bean flew out of this throat and landed on the tiled floor with a with a moist slap.
”Rabbit!” hissed Kanga, scandalised, as Piglet doubled over the bowl again. ”Have some tact! The little feller’s in no state …”
”I wonder if it’s tea time,” murmured Pooh, and headed contemplatively for the larder. Rabbit lunged at him as he passed, but the woodland friends had all long since recognised the warning tics and snot-bubbles, and Pooh sidestepped him elegantly.
‘Kanga,” he said, winking conspicuously at Rabbit and then at the medicine cabinet, ”please make sure that You Know Who doesn’t get into the You Know Where to steal goodies to sell for You Know What.”
Rabbit gave a shuddering sigh, and tried to shoo away a fly that had settled on his dry eyeball. ”Has it come to this?” he croaked. ”Am I being patronised by the most famously limited intellect in all English children’s literature?” He drew himself up as high as his rotted tendons allowed, and with an almost audible scratching of membrane on scab, fixed his gaze on where he hoped Pooh stood in doorway. ”Edward Bear,” he said. ”Please do not assume that my descent into prostitution and petty theft has corresponded with a waning of my mental powers.” But the Bear of Very Little Brain was gone, having remembered the existence of flapjacks in Piglet’s cake tin.
Kanga closed her eyes and wagged a finger. ”Sticks and stones may break my bones, but …”
”Lead pipes work even better, you dissentient sack of menopausal Antipodean pus,” hissed Rabbit.
”Oh please don’t fight!” sobbed Piglet. ”Please, we need to think! If only Owl was here. He’d know what to do.” But Owl wasn’t there, having been buried alive the week before. Until the last moment he’d begged them to listen to him, that he’d never had bird flu in his life; but they were in no mood to listen, and besides, one owl speaking Latin among a million chickens shrieking in Chicken will never be heard, no matter how lucidly he states his case.
”Piglet,” called Pooh from the larder. ”I’m afraid I’ve eaten all your flapjacks by accident.”
Kanga and Rabbit stiffened as their keen ears heard a sound, very far away. It was a truck.
Piglet wanted to ask, ”Do you think it hurts, the culling?” but his mouth wouldn’t work, and all he could do was stare at the water in the toilet and weep.