Saturday In The Park - 12:31 p.m.

“Le mioaux”

In Paris until the end of September is an animal ‘expo’. This exhibition of animals features many family favourites such as the turtle, the python, the hamster and a cat with grey fur and mustard coloured eyes. Each of these creatures are shown on the poster for the expo, the posters put up in their dozens all around Paris and especially in the metro where one cannot go more than a few feet before encountering another.

At first Mr. and Mrs. Oaf found this hilarious as the cat was quite fetching and the hamster in the poster was shown in profile, a bit like an animal mug shot, or an old-style portrait a la “Whistler’s Mother”. After a few days, however, the poster seemed to take on a more sinister tone as it became impossible to escape. Every time Mrs. Oaf saw the poster she would point at the cat and say “le mioaux”.

Earlier in the week Mrs. Oaf had gone completely doolally over puppies and kittens. She would see puppies parading on the Cote d’Azur and she would make wild pronouncements such as “Teddy and Nesbitt are on the way out! Puppies and kittens are in!” It was quite unnerving and distressing as these small creatures were insufferably cute and the bears knew their time might almost be up.

In a shock move to try and placate Mrs. Oaf, Teddy and Nesbitt tried to wheedle their way back into her affections by saying pathetic things like “le mioaux” and “le woof”, purring, cocking their legs at lamp posts and sniffing each other’s butts. It was a demeaning and desperate measure. Luckily it worked.

A week later and we were in Paris and Mrs. Oaf was starting to go a bit mental again about this cat in the poster. Teddy vowed to get the cat if he ever found out who it was and he would, he claimed, “fix his little red wagon”. Nesbitt confessed no ill will to the cat but didn’t like the way the hamster looked sideways at him.

The Tortoise In The Lobby

David claimed that there was a tortoise that lived in the Orient Hotel. The creature apparently lived on one of the top floors of the 19th century pile and would take the lift down to the lobby and then, very, very, very slowly, make its way along the corridor to the garden. There it would eat flowers in the sunshine and observe the tourists. After a meal of plants and shoots and leaves, the tortoise would then go very, very, very slowly back to the lift where it would then ascend back to its roof top penthouse apartment.

David also claimed that there had been two tortoises but one had recently died. The local police suspected poison, but there was no obvious motive, not witnesses and no suspect. The local French police captain said “It was an old tortoise, perhaps it had lost the will to live? No?” and then washed his hands of the whole sad incident.

Although we did not personally see the surviving tortoise we believed the story as the Orient Hotel looked like it might be the kind of place where old tortoises go to live out their twilight years. It is no coincidence perhaps, Teddy postulated, that the Institute Jacques Cousteau is just up the coast in Monaco.

bears in history - future bears

“This diary cracked me up, completely, perhaps the oddest diary I have ever read. I'm not sure if it's a takeoff on something or someone that I have somehow missed. Regardless, TEZNEZCO! chronicles the adventures of two bears and describe them as if they are a minority of some sort. The writing is disturbingly matter-of-fact as if it is perfectly normal to be writing about these bears as people. I like it; it's pleasantly novel" - Diaryreview

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