Zorgamazoo by Robert Paul Weston Page A

wave.
Katrina, of course, knew that nothing was wrong.
“Hi, Morty,” she said. “What took you so long?”
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    Morty said nothing. He had stopped where he was,
when he spotted that whimpering tower of fuzz.
“Uh, Katrina?” he whispered. “I think we should go.
That thing’s not a zorgle—or didn’t you know?”
    Katrina just laughed. “Don’t be silly,” she said.
“There’s nothing to fear, nothing to dread.
Morty, meet Winnie. She’s a windigo beast.
She’s the fiercest in all of the west— and the east.”
“Uh, hi there,” said Morty. He gave her a wave.
(He was trying his best to be stoic and brave).
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    Winnie looked up. “You’re a zorgle,” she said.
“But I thought you were eaten! I thought you were dead!”
She came forward, to Morty, like a lumbering rug,
and hoisted him up for a muscular hug.
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    â€œOkay!” Morty gasped. “It’s true! I’m alive!
But you squeeze any tighter, I doubt I’ll survive!”
“You poor thing.” Winnie sniffled, “How awful for you.
After all that has happened to Zorgamazoo!”
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    Then she loosened her grip. She put Morty down
and her face, once again, tumbled into a frown.
She sniffed through her nose. She grimaced, and then,
her eyes started going all teary again.
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    â€œOkay!” cried Katrina. “Enough is enough!
I’m sick of this miserable whimpering stuff!”
    She was glaring at Winnie, right dead in the eye.
“Just tell us what happened! And try not to cry.”
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    So Winnie was brave. She began to recall,
in every detail, no matter how small,
all that had happened and all that she knew,
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of

Chapter 10
    a terrible tale

    Winnie, you see, was rather a mess. In telling her tale, as maybe you’d guess, she sniffled a lot—and you should understand, she was wiping that snot on the back of her hand.
    Â 
    So I’ll spare you the boogers, all runny and warm,
and I’ll give you her story in summary form:
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    The windigo usually travel in packs.
They’re especially careful to cover their tracks.
They live in the roughest, most mountainous lands,
and scavenge the cliffs, with their family clans.
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    That’s how Winnie was. She was rather the same.
She lived with the clan of her family name,
together in thick and together in thin,
with her uncles and cousins, her kith and her kin.
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    Winifred Windigo Thistle McPaw,
or “Winnie,” of course, as you already saw,
lived on the ridge of a forested peak,
near the banks of a lazy, meandering creek.
    The creek overflowed to the valley below,
and perhaps you might guess where the water would go.
It flowed over rocks, with its watery blue,
to a pond in the middle of Zorgamazoo!
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    So after a morning of hiking around,
traversing the cliffs and the mountainous ground,
the windigo clan would visit their friends,
at the pond where the waterfall finally ends.
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    You see, countryside zorgles and windigo folk,
go together as well as a laugh and a joke;
and whenever together, in Zorgamazoo,
do you know what the zorgles and windigo do?
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    Well, let me say this: In all of my days,
and in all of my study of windigo ways,
the fact that I find to be oddest of all
is that windigo love to play Zorgally Ball!
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    Even Winnie herself (when she wasn’t depressed),
was a batter who batted as well as the best;
and that’s what she did on the terrible day
when the countryside zorgles were stolen away.
    Winnie’s own team, the “Growlers” by name,
came down from the cliffs for a sociable game.
When Winnie arrived, she was limber and spry,
with a spring in her step and a gleam in her eye.
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    She arrived with her Uncle, and Auntie as well,
on a day when the weather was perfectly swell.
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    The zorgles were waiting. The meadow was groomed;
the