Here are some interesting facts about moles:
- There are no moles in Ireland
- They have two thumbs
That’s about it. They’re not the most interesting creatures in the world, so you can imagine the trouble Barnabas T. Trenchdigger has in finding a girlfriend.
Speed Dating
Barnie sat at the bar and eyed up the talent. There wasn’t much on offer. A couple moths, handful of squirrels, dozen or so field mice, the odd rabbit. The usual slim pickings.
This wasn’t Barnie’s first time at an event like this. In fact, his attendances at these socially-questionable shindigs was scraping double figures. He knew the routine. Sit down, let her talk, sound interested, get rejected. Always it was the same. He didn’t mind much. Not really. It got him out the hole. Killed a few hours. Got him a bit tipsy.
A grey squirrel with over-eager eyebrows and an impatient tail jumped up onto the bar. She wore a scarlet top hat with hand-made ear holes, and a vermillion ribbon. A swanky stick swirled from one claw to the other.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, ring-master-like, “Everyone to their seats!”
The first three dates went exactly the same.
“So, erm... What’s your name?”
“Suzie (then Brenda, then Margaret). Yours?”
“Barnie.”
“Oh, OK.”
Then came the same awkward pause while each participant thought of a subject to talk about. Rejected topics of conversation: the increased price of worms, hole tax, above-ground retirement homes, snakes, death, bigger snakes.
“What do you like to...” Bell! Next table.
The fourth date was slightly better. She was a skinny rabbit called Petra. She liked slow hops around the cabbage field and folk music, and disliked the taste of broccoli. They had what most people would call a conversation. Barnie thought of it as a connection.
“How about you and me go somewhere else?” he verbally prodded.
“Or, “ said the rabbit, whose ears were the colour of fallen leaves, “how about you stay here, and I go somewhere else with... erm... him!”
The fifth was much the same as the first three. Pleasant exchange of syllables. A jostling of inadequacies. Pendulums of awkwardness. A small break was called, before the final few meets. Barnie rushed towards the bar, gasping for inebriation.
He ordered a double vodka, straight. (Like human vodka, underground animal vodka is made by distilling and fermenting potatoes. Unlike human vodka, it’s mainly water). Downed it, and then downed another. His eyeballs contracted, and then erupted. His vision swam amongst the hoard of creatures, ethereal and with a life of its own. His bones shivered.
“You’ll want to slow down,” said a voice from his behind his ear. Barnie turned and stared. His advisor was either a small, green, flaming duck, a hedgehog with purple spines, or a blue ball of wool. Stab in the dark.
“Quack?” he replied. His voice rippled with pride and straightened with unsurety.
“Woof!” Dog wasn’t an option. Why wasn’t dog an option?
It couldn’t be a dog, his sober mind told him. Dogs were big and scary and chased moles and bit moles and ate moles and most certainly didn’t give moles advice at speed-dating conventions.
“You’re not a dog...”
“Hmmm. No, I suppose I’m not. But I could be a dog.”
“You could be a dog?”
“Oh, I could definitely be a dog. Listen. Woof!”
“No. No. That doesn’t mean you’re a dog.”
“Well I’m certainly not a cat. And I never said I was a dog. I said I could be a dog.”
“But you can’t be a dog.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not a dog.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t be a dog. Who are you to tell me I can’t be a dog?” And with that, the flaming green duck, or the hedgehog with purple spines, or the blue ball of wool stormed off.
“Wait,” Barnie called, his arm reaching out further than his voice. This only led to him falling from his stool and landing, snout-first, on the ground. His chances faded slightly slower than his consciousness.
Apparently, the universe decided that for highly hammered and mischievously malaised moles there would be no sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth. Instead, there would be a throbbing at the temples, a sickly uprising in the gullet and a stink of embarrassment.
Barnie didn’t find out about these gifts of fate until the next morning. He woke in the same bed he’d woken up in for the last twenty years, to the same view and the same life that always greeted his first flickers of vision. With one exception. A note, purple-spined to the wall.
‘The hawthorn bush. Sundown. A week today. Quack’
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