A Coronavirus Tale for Our Times

Once upon a time there was a bat called Boris who caught a bad cold; unfortunately, instead of staying in until he recovered, like his mummy had told him, he went out to play with his friends and he passed it on to them. One of his friends, called Dominic (not a cool name for a bat, but he didn’t care), decided to visit his family in another part of the country. Dominic didn’t know that he had caught Boris’s cold, and so he passed it on to his family and friends and they, in turn, passed it on to their friends. Meanwhile, other friends of Boris had caught this cold and were merrily passing it on to everyone else they met – Hank Matcock, Sharp Grant, Dominic Rabid and Rees-Moggy, the local tomcat who liked to tell everyone else how to live their lives, did a sterling job of ensuring that as many animals as possible caught this nasty cold. Some even died, but Boris and his friends lost count of how many, so they pretended that the numbers weren’t as high as they really were and, since many animals can’t count very high – usually only to 3, sometimes 4 – nobody was very concerned.

Oh dear, thought Boris, this can’t all be my fault. It must have been caused by something else; so he consulted lots of other very clever animals – some of whom could count to 5! – and they learned that Ickie the Iguana had originally created the virus by accident when he was shape-shifting one day, using different viruses to help him change from being a Nile crocodile – because they get such bad press! – to something smaller and cuter like a turtle; unfortunately, Ickie mixed his viruses wrongly, which is how he ended up as an iguana, but he didn’t really mind, because iguanas are quite popular, almost as much as turtles. However, one of his friends, Donald the horny lizard, caught the mixed-up virus and passed it on to another shape-shifter, called Billy Gator (his brother Ally had shape-shifted once too often and was now stuck as a wart snake, which nobody liked very much at all).

Billy Gator was a very caring reptile and helped lots of other creatures, even those that weren’t reptiles, but some creatures didn’t like him doing this and accused him of working with the Big Farmer. NOBODY liked the Big Farmer because he didn’t care very much for other creatures, only himself and making as much money as he could. Billy was very upset by this accusation and consulted some of his REALLY important friends – the Gods in the Skies! He spoke to Plautus, the Greek god of wealth, and asked him if he could help reclaim his reputation, but Plautus was too busy handing out wealth right, left and centre (the centre consisted solely of Libdem, a cheerful, if small, rabbit) to help Billy. So, Billy went to Anubis, the Egyptian dog of death (Billy thought Anubis was a god, but he’d never been any good at spelling), but Anubis was also busy, embalming dead animals and looking after the Underworld with his Greek mate Hades who, for some unknown reason, had changed his name to Pluto, which confused the animals enormously because they either got him mixed up with Plautus, the one giving away money, or a dwarf living up in the sky at the end of a terraced row of planets, or a large, long-eared dog who was the pet of a large mouse called Mickey.

When Boris learned all this, he was really pleased, because it meant he hadn’t started it all and now he could wash his hands of the whole thing – except that bats don’t have hands… and therein lies the moral of the story…😁

Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite – you never know what disease they may be carrying!