SCREEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!  HIT THE BRAKES!
        Stop the presses!
        Wait wait wait wait wait!
        I never thought it would come to this, dear readers.
        It looks like it's now time to tell the story of the wolf and the penguin!
        Sigh.
        Honestly, I never thought the mouse's adventures would come this far.
        And I sure hadn't planned on the wolf and the penguin.
        But, then again, neither had the mouse.
        So, then, with that in mind, let's begin....

IN ORDER TO fully understand the story of the wolf and the penguin, a little revision is required.
        You see, because it never crossed my mind-- ever-- to deal with this aspect of the mouse's life-- until of course it was too late and I had to deal with it-- I made the horrible mistake of making it seem like the mouse had been working with the ostrich all along-- when in fact the ostrich only came to work with the mouse after the mouse had been ejected from his happy little cubby hole in the smaller store and forcibly shoved into a subservient position in the larger store.
        However, already things have become confused kind of confused-- because where was the ostrich before the mouse came to work at the bigger store?  And what about the mouse's relationship to the crow?  These questions and many others will be both asked and answered in story of the wolf and the penguin.
        So, here's how it is:

TO BEGIN WITH, to make things a little more easy to digest, let's give this store the mouse worked at a name.
        Let's call the store:
        Charlie's.
        And, therefore, let's call the owner:
        Charlie.
        Good?  You like that?
        Great.
        It makes things easier.

NOW, THERE WERE actually two Charlie's stores in the "real" world-- although there used to be lots more.  They kind of went in and out of business all the time.
        But, during the mouse's adventures in the "real" world, there was a big Charlie's store, and a small Charlie's store.
        The small Charlie's store was the little store the mouse worked at when he first started working for Charlie.  The store where he could stand around all day feeling sad, talking to artists and kitty cats and other people, the store he was really-- deep down inside-- despite the fact he was a petulant bratty little mouse-- the most happy at.
        Then there was the big Charlie's store.  The big Charlie's store was over the river-- and that was where the ostrich worked when the mouse first started working for Charlie.  And that was also where the penguin worked, and the wolf worked, and there was also a guy named Ed the mouse had known for a long time.
        Actually, both the mouse and the wolf had gotten hired at roughly the same time.  But that's neither here nor there.

SO THE MOUSE worked at the small Charlie's store and the ostrich and the penguin and the wolf worked at the big Charlie's store.
        Sometimes the mouse would also work at the big Charlie's store, too.  This is because the mouse was sort of an all-purpose mouse.  He could work with books and music and comic books, and buy and sell and trade used stuff-- and also order all kinds of new stuff from all the distributors.  And he also knew a lot about all the stuff that was in the books and cds and comics and stuff, too.  He was kind of a renaissance mouse-- in that way at least.
        And when the mouse worked at the big Charlie's store either Charlie or Charlie's wife would work at the small Charlie's store.
        And what about the crow?  How does he figure into all this?
        He isn't in the picture for a while, yet.

SO THE MOUSE worked at the Charlie's stores and it was actually kind of like a big happy family.  For a while.
        Sure they'd all fight, and sure people were kind of annoyed at the ostrich because the ostrich was so weird-- but the ostrich was sort of like an eccentric brother or something.  But, also, the ostrich sometimes wasn't a very nice guy.  And, in fact, sometimes he was a downright tyrant.
        But, unfortunately, the ostrich was the manager of the big Charlie's store.  And so everyone had to do what he said.
        Except the mouse.  And this wasn't because the ostrich respected the mouse, but only because the mouse was seen as being more or less a manager in his own right, and so the ostrich couldn't really push him around.
        And also, the mouse-- even though he was just a little white mouse-- could also stomp the ostrich into a greasy smear.
        Because even though ostriches are much bigger than mouses, this ostrich-- for all his petulance-- was kind of a wuss.

ANYWAY, THE MOUSE worked at both stores and had a good time.
        However, one day one of Charlie's other businesses burned down, and that gave Charlie the money to set up another big Charlie's store, and close the little one.  And so, that's what Charlie did.  In fact, the new Charlie's store was actually bigger than the big Charlie's store.  So now there were two big Charlie's stores.
        Let's call them the big Charlie's store and the bigger Charlie's store.  The big one being the store with the ostrich and the wolf and the penguin and Ed, and the bigger one being the new store, the one that replaced the little Charlie's store.
        The one the mouse found himself relocated to.
        And this is where the crow entered the picture.

SO THE MOUSE worked with the crow and Dave-- and Ed from the big Charlie's store got transferred down, too.  And so they all worked together and every now and then the crow would antagonize the mouse because the crow was drunk, and then Charlie would come in and belittle the mouse because the crow would tell Charlie the mouse wasn't doing his job-- even though the mouse knew a thousand times more about working at Charlie's than the crow.  And sometimes the mouse would fly into rages.
        And all through this, the Eagle watched and chuckled to itself.  It could afford to wait.  As you know already, time moves differently for Eagles.

BUT, MEANWHILE, HOWEVER:
        Up at the big Charlie's store (as opposed to the bigger Charlie's store), things were beginning to change.  Because Ed had been moved down to the bigger store, and because Charlie felt it was time to maybe bring in some fresh new blood, Charlie hired two DJs to work at the big Charlie's store.
        And so, the staff at the store across the river now consisted of the ostrich, the wolf, the penguin, and the two DJs.  The two DJs, however, hated working with the ostrich because the ostrich was now a total tyrant who preached about love and learning and tolerance, but never ever allowed anyone to play any music the ostrich didn't approve of (and the ostrich had a very narrow, pretentious taste in music-- in fact much of the music the ostrich played-- things like long Indian ragas, and shrill Klezmer music, funeral dirges, and lots and lots of very harsh-sounding Celtic music-- frequently had customers leaving the store with their hands over their ears.  The mouse knew this because they would then come to the bigger Charlie's store and complain about the ostrich and the depressing or annoying music he always played), and also the ostrich always told everyone what to do all the time, and ignored customers, and swore a lot, and farted in front of people.  And the DJs refused to put up with this crap, and so they rebelled.
        And then the wolf had an idea.
        To be continued.

Next:  Higher learning....