Moomin explained some of his animals tonight. I love these stories. If you think of the animals as personality-fragments that get split off from the self as a sort of personal-narrative reality-processing experiment, it’s very comforting that he knows how to take care of all these small lonely creatures…
This owl is so tiny and cute! Isn’t he sweet? He’s just a baby! And he’s so cute! Look at his little feet! A sabre-toothed tiger killed his parents. But he was really fast because he was so small, so he got away. (Pretend we rescued him when I was a baby, okay? But not really, because he’s just stuffed.) Remember when I was a baby and we rescued him from out in the bushes? He got lost from the jungle, running away from the tiger… Good thing I’m here to take care of him… he’s *so sweet*. He can stick his feet up in his pouch. It’s a good thing that isn’t really his butt, because then he’d be sticking his feet up his butt, and wouldn’t that be SO GROSS? Actuallly this whole owl can go into Pecky’s pouch, and it’s a good thing that’s not Pecky’s butt, too. Pecky, and Owly, and Parry are all birds so they’re all friends, and Army and Green-ear and Tigey are all mammals and they’re all friends. So, they’re all a team. This owl’s mom used to have a machine that made it so he didn’t have to sleep. So he could be away in the daytime. It was an Experiment. He can be awake in the night OR the day.
And this rabbit is always sleeping because he’s under a spell. He was always getting made fun of at school. The other kids would make fun of her because she was small and sort of a little kid. And she can sing the best lullabies when accidentally you pull her tail. The big mean bully tiger was making fun of her, and she sent him to sleep with her song. She’s so beautiful. And actually what happened was the tiger’s mom came to school and took away his mouth with magic, because he was so mean. First she took away his teeth, then she took away his mouth. So he was a tiger without a mouth. Isn’t that weird? He had to eat through his ears, with a straw, and he couldn’t hear anything because his ears were always full of soup. But the bunny was asleep anyway. This bunny is so beautiful and so sweet. I wish I could marry him. I always take care of this bunny and no one can step on her.
My tiger is a good tiger. The tiger’s parents were killed, but I don’t really know how it happened. – Tigey, how did it happen that your parents got killed? – Well, there was a saber-toothed tiger who ate them up. – No! Tigey! Stop saying that! Ate them up! Stop saying that your parents were killed… it makes me crazy. Besides, now I’m here to take care of you and protect you.
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