Cartoon Staples

"Stumble stumble crawl crawl stagger hop run walk stagger stagger fall...", Yellow Beard's wisdom.

So nothing worth fighting for will ever be easy.  What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger.  If you don't know it half drunk and hung over then you just don't know it.

Any of these can easily inspire even the most defeatist amongst us, and motivate all to join in chanting toga toga toga.

Let us look at the bright side of our situation for a moment and think that it can always get worse or rather I can only go up from here.

So all we needed was a plan, funding, and enough liquid courage to embalm Jaba.

Recruiting efforts were kept mainly away from campus and places of employ as this would lead the powers that be straight back to us.  A simple choice had to be made.  What caliber of comrades were we looking for and to what lengths would we go to ensure that they were loyal on our current budget?  We needed individuals with different sets of expertise, backgrounds, and anonymity.

We had the planning and real life experience that the Cowboy possessed.
We had my drive and, for lack of a better word, vision.

All we needed was someone with veterinary skills, another with good connections to the animal kingdom and or zoological society, a small group of willing soldiers, and finally some pissed off ex-green peace member willing to fund this endeavour.

and what better place to find such individuals than a rancher's birthday party.

We arrived at what I like to call the Yosemite Sam Convention about mid afternoon with a casket size cooler full of ambrosia and our agenda.  The conversation started innocently enough when asked about how those around the poker table felt about wrongful imprisonment.  Since a large portion of the table had had some sort of brush with the law, the talk seemed rather one sided and even turned into a stroll down memory lane for a few of us.  My only real experience of the US system of law was the knowledge of how much the fine for pointing the wrong finger at a law enforcement officer was.  ($97.50 if you must know).
Again I was out of my element and only my passion for the eventual freedom of the pink gave me the courage to go further with what I was ultimately proposing.

"Are you Freagin' serious?!?", says the mostly anesthetized birthday boy.

"Yes I am", was my simple answer.

After the roar of the table's laughter had quieted, I went on to describe what I was proposing.  I found myself hoping that most of them would be too far gone to remember the talk if they were not interested.  The knowledge that the men willing to help would only remember that they had said yes and would follow through regardless of what sobriety would have them do otherwise was a comforting thought.

How slowly the picture comes into focus as if needing to be warmed up by the morning sun.  Fuzzy memories and segments of conversations seem to take just as long to assemble.

Had I really gotten a following?  Did some of them say yes?
Where were my boots and why were my jeans in the pool?