The Subterfuge - Part I

…and that was when I finally convinced all of the world’s supposed academics of their unconscionable lunacy in continuing to hold to their misguided belief that Pluto was a planet.

Unfortunately, the unenviable task of telling all of the assembled Plutonian visitors that since they did not come from an actual planet, they did not actually exist also fell on my shoulders. It was heartbreaking – not for me, but rather I suppose it would have been heartbreaking for all of those Plutonians if they had hearts that existed.

But even more daunting and unnerving than having to worry about telling the Plutonians that they did not exist was dealing with the Plutonians’ Plutonian pets. You see, even though the Plutonians did not exist, they did at least have consciousnesses (which I suppose probably technically did not exist either) and after some time I was able to finally convince them all (indeed, some were a little bit slower to understand than others – they are not unlike human beings in this regard) that hey, you don’t come from a real planet and so you aren’t real.

The pets, of course, had no consciousnesses. And so this fact created quite the ruckus when the Plutonians, to whom the Plutonian pets were slavishly devoted (as is the case with real pets and their owners), were gone. So how did I solve this problem?

Well, as anyone can tell, certain pets happen to be a lot smarter than others. Then again, certain pets happen to not be so bright. And the Plutonians happened to have pets that were mostly of the doglike variety, meaning of course that these pets were not very bright. Thus most of these pets were easily dealt with with the old throw an imaginary ball into the street and let the pet chase it trick. (Now it just occurred to me that maybe since these pets themselves were not real, maybe they could see the imaginary balls that I was throwing. An interesting idea to ponder…) Now what happened when the pets ran into the streets? Well, they got hit by cars of course. (And I must say that I was particularly stunned at the eagerness of one particular little black Plutonian dog named Yelir to run without hesitation into the streets. I got the feeling that this dog would have been fooled by anything…)

Everything was going splendidly when I came to one particular peculiar looking dog. Regardless of how many times I tried to throw this imaginary ball, this dog just did not seem to want to chase it. I was getting a little frustrated when I finally decided to take a closer look at this dog. Upon closer inspection, I realized that this “dog” was in fact a hamster-dog hybrid. I know! That sounds impossible to believe. A hamster-dog hybrid cannot possibly be real (and of course it wasn’t since it was a Plutonian pet), although I can recall having seen a similar sort of creature once before in real life.

Well, it was clear that the dog instincts of the pet were not dominant so I decided that it was best to test out the animal’s hamster instincts. I thought for a moment, what could possibly lure this animal out into the street? And then it occurred to me: a hamster wheel! And so I set up an imaginary hamster wheel in the street (making sure to look both ways before walking out there – it’s important to always do this) and then walked back to the sidewalk.

With everything in place, I now had to get the hamster-dog’s attention. And so I called out to it, “Here Pako! Here Pako! Hamster wheel!” And just as I had hoped, the little hamster-dog went running out to the hamster wheel, jumped on as I turned and walked away never to worry about this little problem again.

The End.

Preview: And before you ask, no, I didn’t watch the baseball all-star game last night. And I also didn’t watch the homerun derby the night before. (In fact, I don’t even know who won the homerun contest.) Baseball just doesn’t hold the same interest for me as it did since this whole steroid “controversy” started up. If you have a problem with that, I don’t care, deal with it.