The door bell rang and there, standing on his hind legs, was a crocodile. I said you won't believe it; but it's true. Standing some seven feet tall, taller than me, was a crocodile.
I was at a loss for words. I usually am when I don't have my dictionary with me. I had left it in the living room open at the page where it explains what onomatopoeia is.
I bet you don't know what onomatopoeia is. It is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. For example words such as "oink", "meow", "roar" and "chirp". But since this was a crocodile and not a pig, cat, lion or bird, it did not do any of these onomatopoeic sounds.
It just stood there and said, "I've failed again and all is lost!"
Well, that got me confused and flabbergasted at the same time. I can't remember which came first. A talking crocodile indeed. Reminded me of that talking snake in the Bible. The first ever consultant in the world. I could have fallen to the ground with a crash; and no doubt created another onomatopoeic word.
But I didn't. I was angry so I stood my ground. I was not so much angry at having been interrupted by a talking crocodile but more so because I had minutes previously swallowed a piece from my favourite 1000 pieces jigsaw puzzle. The jigsaw portrayed the scene from The Death of Sardanapalus, oil on canvas, by Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix. Do you know it? If not, look it up.
Anyway, as I was saying, before my vanity enticed me to portray my intellect. I had just swallowed a piece of my jigsaw puzzle and that made me angry. I was busily making the puzzle whilst having breakfast and a piece fell into my corn flakes bowl and I inadvertently ate it. And it was central to the whole scene too; as you'll testify if you'd bother to look the painting up.
So an unexpected visit by a talking crocodile put the icing on the cake as it were. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Look up the meaning of metaphor yourself; I'm too busy telling this story.
Before I could say anything, the crocodile at my doorstep started to cry. I could tell straight away they were crocodile tears.
"Snap out of it!" I said. Which is an unfortunate turn of phrase to use to a crocodile. "Snap out of it ... you have interrupted my breakfast consisting of corn flakes, warm milk, a little sugar and bits of card board essential to a complicated amusing pastime consisting of formulating a nice picture by joining together the said pieces of cardboard!"
He wasn't listening. He mumbled incoherently that he was due to attend a fancy dress party the night before, where he intended to propose to his girl-friend, who incidentally was attending as a KFC chicken leg.
But he got lost and ran out of petrol just opposite my house. As he got out of the car to ask me for help, he trod on his long tail, fell forward, knocking his head on the ground where he stayed unconscious all night.
This morning he regained consciousness, and the first thing he did was to turn his car radio on to check what time it was. On the news it was reported that there was a crocodile loose in our area, so he quickly ran to my house in case said crocodile would attack him and kill him. Something he feared his girlfriend might also do thinking that he had stood her up at the party.
Well, with a tall tale like this ... I mean an unbelievable story, not a tall tail which the crocodile certainly had ... please stop interrupting me ... as I was saying; what could I do?
I let him in. He phoned his girlfriend. And an hour later a KFC chicken leg came to his rescue.
Have you ever seen a crocodile kiss a KFC chicken leg?
