h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bravo! I'll strart pressing the apples for cider!

YUM YUM!!!

I've warned the other dragonfiels about your visit, and they have agreed to a cease-fire. However, it would still be nice if you bought your instrument. Ecotype has just taken possesion of a new instrument, which he assures me is very 'boopy'. Perhaps I can persuade him to join is?

YAY!!! YES... do... ... most exciting!!!!

How many sticks can you carry cross the ocean. . .I was thinking we could have a fire.

I can only carry little twigs, and with my guitar, I think I can manage four twigs...

Four is, oddly enough, precisely the number with which I usually start a fire. Wonderful.

::arrives with four twigs and one guitar::

?

::starts to play her guitar, smiley sweetly as she tunes it::

::sings::
I don't drink alcohol...
Only chocolate milk...
It's so good for you,
And is as rich as silk!!!

Chocolate milk?
Shake?

No, just chocolate milk...

Here you go!

Thank you kindly!!! ... shall we have a song!???

A song? But how can you play your guitar after having ingested so much neurotoxin?
Dragonfly can fly no more. All she can do is watch in horror as Frogbit cunningly constructs a cage from the four twigs the young insect carried here herself. After finishing the cage he carefuly places Drangonfly inside, and takes her to the greenhouse where, on shelf after shelf, are cages containing captured drangonflies. Some of the smaller cages are constructed of three sticks, some of the larger constructed of six. A sign above the shelves says "Idiot insects that brought their own cages."
Frogbit affixes a label to the front of Dragonfly's cage. She is regaining a little movement, so cranes her head round to read it. It says "Dragonfly Americanum."
Frogbit smiles into the middle distance, leaves the greenhouse and slips back into his pond, satisfied after a few months hard work coming into fruition.

(It seems that Dragonfly was put into the cage along with her trusty guitar. She takes off the strings and uses the tuning pegs to bore holes in the sticks. She is able to remove one of the sticks and slide out of her cage, using all her guitar strings tied together as a rope to lower herself. She figures out how to release her fellow dragonflies and is successful, but also very sad at the same time because she thought she had made a friend in Frogbit but it seems her friend is an unsavory character!!!

(The still-living dragonflies make a run for it, one of them half alive and so depressed and ashamed about being captured that, when Dragonfly is not paying attention, the dragonfly uses the guitar-string rope to hang herself...

(Dragonfly realises what has happened, and quickly flies back to see if she can rescue the other insect. It's too late.

(Dragonfly narrowly escapes Frogbit in the end.)

::unsubscribe from conversation::

Wow that was harsh - I was making the whole thing up you know. I'm all depressed now. Where's that guitar string? Over by the corpse of that. . .Hey! It's not dead... it's still moving!
- dragonfly leaps into air and heads west, into the setting sun -
Stop! Come back! I was lonely! Hello? HEELLOOO?

You were harsh first. You don't make friends by imprisioning them and calling them idiots.

True. But the web is not a safe place. Had you not foiled my plan, I was to wake you all up in the morning, lecture you all on the perils of trusting strange plants in faraway countries, and release you all with a bottle of milk-mate (tm), a neurotoxin neutraliser that can be applied to any lactose based drink... (Only $14.99). You may argue that the only reason you would need such a thing is because of plants like me...but I happen to be one of the good guys. There are several close relatives of frogbit which would have sold you onto unscrupulous dragonfly dealers. Hopefully my lesson has had it's desired effect on those I imprisoned, and you haven't ruined everything after-all.

Ps. Metropolitan - is that like Cosmopolitan for French railway enthusiasts?

the Metropolitan is my college newspaper... and I replied to this once!!! ARGH!!!!