Balloons. What are they? Most people have seen a balloon at one time or another. They are round, usually. Sometimes they are long. They come in colors. Red. Blue. Yellow. Other colors, too. One supposes they have their uses, though I confess my moustache gave a skeptical twitch when the Pickax Chamber of Commerce announced a balloon festival on the town square — funded, I could not help but notice, by a modest grant from the Klingenschoen Fund, which I am told was perfectly routine and required no oversight from me personally, despite what certain people may whisper at the Dimsdale Diner.
Do we need balloons? That is a question worth asking. I asked Koko, and he stared at me with those luminous eyes that see through walls, through time, through the very fabric of human pretension. Then he pushed a book off the shelf. It was *The Hindenburg Disaster: A Pictorial History.* Coincidence? My moustache says otherwise.
Yum Yum, for her part, batted a deflated balloon across the kitchen floor with the precision of a neurosurgeon, then carried it to my feet as if presenting evidence at trial. These cats understand things. Profound things. Things we cannot fathom with our crude human faculties.
Speaking of things one cannot fathom, there has been another suspicious fire on Ittibittiwassee Road — the fourth this month, which seems about average for a quiet farming community of three thousand souls where I happen to reside. Chief Brodie mentioned the arsonist left behind a partially melted balloon. I was, of course, nowhere near the scene, having been home all evening feeding the cats their organic chicken breast, which now costs six dollars a pound, an outrage I intend to deduct as a professional consultation expense.
Why do people release balloons into the sky? Where do they go? Who pays for the string? These are questions no one in Moose County seems willing to investigate. I would look into it myself, but Koko has climbed atop the refrigerator and is making a guttural sound that typically precedes either a revelation or a hairball. Either way, my attention is required. You’re welcome, Moose County.
Balloons.
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