Chapter 35

When Lucy's pink tweed clad body struck the fencing, she catapulted over the edge, holding on with all ten fingernails.

Her succinct grip upon the wire fencing lifted it quite literally out of the ground.

At first, two large pot bellied pigs stood in disbelief, suddenly face to face with a very large tortoise. And then madness struck the boars with such snarky elegance that they bellowed and charged, attempting to ram the tortoise in the 12 inch gap between fencing and floor.

These pigs, quite large and valuable for the size of their bodies and not their brains, ended up misjudging the distance and rammed each other in the face.

Quite stunned, the pigs needed a moment to regain their senses, upon which time they realized their tusks had become entangled. A few shrieks and side steps later and they were actually standing atop a giant tortoise, attempting to disentangle themselves.

Sensing danger, this tortoise made a slow and peremptory beeline for her mate, across the enclosure.

An unbalanced pig is an extraordinarily precarious thing, and these two were no exception. Lucy was still clinging to the off-kilter fence when two pigs locked in a tasmanian style swirl-off rolled off the back of the tortoise and tumbled toward her.

Jay, attempting to reach her, got his belt loop snagged on a fence post, and was rendered useless.

Her eyes grew larger as the swine approached, helter skelter, and as they struck the fence below Lucy like two three ton bowling balls, her rapid ascent and then more rapid descent through gravity was made more comical by her limbs, moving in a swimming motion, trying to gain traction midair.

She landed atop Jay, who cushioned her fall with his own body, and the help of the thick pile of sawdust and hay beneath them.

They were upright just in time to see their pursuant crowd approaching at breakneck speed.

As they began to run, shaking off sawdust with their sprints, another pot bellied pig began to scream, followed by an agonized honk.

Passing the fowled up mess of fencing, Lucy turned her head to the right one more time to see that the last tumble those two pigs had taken slammed them into the side of the goose enclosure.

There were suddenly birds in the air, flying in random formation, defecating, screaming, and colliding with derision.

In a nearby pen, the llamas and camels were so frightened by the cataclysmic events that they began to spit, launching large rancid streams into the general public, including Jay and Lucy's chasers.

This crowd, intent on catching their prey, suddenly found themselves covered in funky green grime that smelled of twice chewed dog food and week old fish. Camel spit, after all, is really chewed up cud: food regurgitated from one of the chambers of its fore-stomach.

And so, as the agitated and still entwined pot bellied pigs began to ram the goose fence, geese began to flutter into every pen in the petting zoo. Some of rapscallions within those pens took wishful chomps, and some were successful.

Children screamed, geese honked, and feathers flew until they landed upon the delightfully sticky camel spit covering most of the crowd.

When the fastest of the pack began to suffer from calamities related to goose feathers plastered over their eyeballs, the rear collided like dominoes.

And suddenly, Jay and Lucy, with one more glance behind them at the goose and sawdust cloud, realized they were in the clear.

They ran to safety.