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Disclaimer: Any resemblances here to real people, places, institutions or events are purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.

Warning: this episode is quite graphic, especially toward the end. I tried to figure out how to tone it down, but in keeping with the flow of the story, I could not determine a way to do it. My apologies in advance if you are offended.

We pick up where we left off last week, still in Chapter 5:

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We waited for a long time. Some of us were getting impatient. Finally, a few of the big things appeared on the other side of the open space. They crawled around, sort of like the way we scurry. They had shiny poles with them. Well, they weren't real shiny, but occasionally the big light would flash off of them. They got within about 45 quivers of the deer. The deer lunged at their ropes and were very frightened.

Boom!

One deer fell.

Boom!

The next deer fell.

The big things got up. They were laughing and shouting. They came up to the deer and looked at their antlers. One of them took a thin thing out of their pocket and pointed it at the other ones holding the antlers. They were having a good time.

Soon, a BTI with black spinners showed up. A couple of dark-skinned big things got out and went over to the deer. They unstaked them, picked them up and threw them on the back of the BTI. Then another kind of BTI showed up and the rest of the big things disappeared inside it. Soon they were all gone.

The Grandmother said, "Come over here for a treat!" We all scurried over to where she was. She was feeding on a sticky liquid the deer had left behind. It was very, very tasty.

We looked to the locals, "Thank you very much, but we must get back to the convention."

"Oh, not so fast," said the Grandmother. "This was just the appetizer. Follow us for the real meal."

We looked at each other, "We really should start back."

"You afraid of that old Great Mother? She can't harm you. Come on with us for a while."

Well, we gave in.

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In about 10,000 quivers we came upon a long low building the big things had built out of trees. The BTIs we had seen before were there. Pretty soon, another BTI, a long black one, showed up. Out came a bunch of female big things. They were laughing and giggling.

They went inside the tree building. Pretty soon we could hear lots of noise. It sounded like all the big things were having a good time. There was a platform on the back of the tree building where you could see in the holes. The Grandmother said, let's go up there and I will show you what the big things do.

We hid around some bushes on the platform. Pretty soon, yellow light came. Looking through the hole we could see a male and female big thing come in the room. They were laughing and pulling on each other--they pulled until their outer skins came off. Then the most amazing thing happened--it looked like they started making babies of our species! I said as much to the Grandmother.

She said, "No, they are just faking it. They don't want babies. They just want to pretend."

"Why would they do that?"

"Well, the males like to pretend and they pay the females. They are just like our males, big talk, no responsibility."

"What does 'pay the females' mean?"

She looked at me like I was the dumbest of our species. She started to go on, but something caught her eye, "We are in luck!" she squeaked. About that time a little skin landed near us. It was full of a sticky liquid, better than what the deer had left. We began to fight over it, for there were many of us.

The Grandmother said, "Calm down, there will be more. Just split up and go around to the open holes. I am sure you will all get your bellies full.

She was right. We broke into little groups and waited outside the holes in the tree building. About every 10th of a light, for the whole yellow time, here came the little skins full of tasty liquid, just like clockwork.

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For safety this week...well, never mind.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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