Continuing the expeditions of Jeff MacNelly, James Kilpatrick, and Eugene McCarthy, with apologies.

The Dangle

With seductive eyes and a desperation borne and a siege mentality and instinctual self preservation, the Dangle spends most of its life in the trees, away from any harm to its personal liberty. Its connection to the muddy swamp below its lair is its sensuous tail, lushly maintained, and appearing to beckon interested parties to safety. Of course, rarely is the beckon genuine, and the gesture is always for the benefit of the Dangle alone, who likes to test its powers of attraction and manipulation. For this, the creature will remove its gaze from reflective surfaces, a diversion which encumbers most of the rest of its time.

The Dangle is so selfish as to disregard any utterances not coming from its own mouth, save one, for it is known to respond to this inquiry: “Pardon?” This phenomenon is extremely curious, for another creature, the Pardon, is the Dangle’s distant and more powerful cousin, and it is known that on rare occasions a dangle, perhaps through some aspirational transfiguration, has metamorphosed into a pardon.

–Danny Grosso