My Koala

by Alex Scott

I have a pet koala, I found him on the ground. He is a small furry koala of the clamp subspecies – which is to say, if you pinch the nerves in his lower back he opens his little paws, and when you release then, he ‘clamps' them shut again. He is about thirty centimetres tall, with wee… beady… eyes. He is a self-hating koala. He hasn't told me this as such, but you can see it in those eyes, the violence, the hatred of all things koala.

He keeps saying things, strange things at dinner or when we're out with friends, somehow he will work koalas into the conversation – which inevitably is followed by a solid twenty minutes of koala bashing. It's really embarrassing; I mean, everyone hates koalas to a certain degree, so they are prepared to go along with him a distance, but he takes off, rants. Nobody knows what to make of it, particularly as he is a koala… but he just can't see it. Or won't see it.

I mean, I like the guy, we're close, but I'm losing friends fast and I don't want to stand around while he destroys himself. I think he does just want an audience. It's sad really. Still, I've got my own life to live you know? I think I'm going to have to give him a call and lay it all out there, like an intervention. He's too touchy for me to do it face to face, I'd only get half-way through before he would have a broken bottle at my throat. And we all remember what happened last time.

I've never seen anything quite like that…

 

This story is taken from Total Cardboard issue 5, and remains under copyright. For more information see www.totalcardboard.com