Boxed Lunatics: A Better Brand of Customer

Tonight I have a little story for you, epic only in its silliness. Kind-hearted Kitty felt it would be only right to make good her promise to fashion me a bird hide (for stalking purposes). She delivered said lovingly crafted wooden hidey-hole as I wandered about the SL shopping districts during my lunch hour and encouraged me to try it on.

I should have guessed what she was up to when she innocently enquired what I was doing, but with the naivety of the seldom stalked, I chirpily gave her the precise coordinates of Tesla, my next shopping stop.

Then landed next to her.

Also in a bird hide.

"And that," she said, with a flourish, "Is how you stalk people."

Right there, outside a shoe shop, as I bristled at the challenge to my lurking crown, the Great Second Life Stalk-off began.

"So now you're stalking each other....simultaneously?" asked Laura, rather pertinently.

"Yes," Kitty replied, adjusting her binoculars. "It makes it easier. We can pencil it in and stuff."

We stood staring at each other for a while, marvelling at how much less of a bother it is to stalk a person when they keep nice and still, until a thought occured to both of us - also simultaneously - and we turned, slowly and ominously, towards Laura.

"You're making me feel like a gazelle," Laura pouted. "I feel I should stride about in the long grass."

In a somewhat misguided effort to combat this feeling, Laura reverted to her natural form... which turned out to be an ostrich.

"With those legs?" asked Kitty, also pertinently. "I thought you were a vulture."

"Yeh, what's going on with those?" wondered Laura, looking down at them in annoyance.

"You're just stunted," I said, not without sympathy.

"And that's why mummy ostriches shouldn't smoke," Kitty agreed. While we appreciated Kitty's wit, Laura made a break for it - but not fast enough for the Stalking Two.

"Oh my god, I turn around and there are some boxed lunatics," she exclaimed as she sprinted for the escalator. "Ha! I outsmarted the crazy people!"

Shaking our heads at the Laura ostrich, we boarded the escalator and glid gracefully, though ominously (and also simultaneously), upwards.

"Useless ostrich," I gloated, like that dalek in the new series that worked out how to climb the stairs. "We cannot be outsmarted. We glid."

But Kitty's ever-stylish eye had strayed to the bird's stunted feet.

"I don't think those work with your legs," said Kitty after a pause, looking at the shoes it was trying on.

"Certainly not the pink," I agreed, warming to the task.

Could we have a future as secret style advisors, leaping out from our subtle hiding places to prevent fashion accidents before they happen? Watch this space...

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As a brief aside, I believe it my duty to issue a countrywide warning: shopping with Canimal is dangerous. I've just returned from a late night spree with her in Kingston and, as you can see, I spent rather more on jewellery than I perhaps ought to have. Turns out Claire's Accessories do goody bags with 10 random items inside for £3. I feel like an impatient, yet replete, magpie.