p2pnet P2P:- By way of a short intro, I run p2pnet and I hope readers won’t mind me hijacking the site for purely personal reasons — an online publishing project.

When Emma, our daughter, was a little girl, I told her stories at bedtime (just like every other dad in the world, probably ) and one of them centered on a skunk named Elvis.

Five years ago we (Emma, my wife Liz and I) moved from Ontario to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, and among the new friends we made was Tracy Lewis.

Apart from other things, she’s a story teller and  illustrator and she made the pictures you’ll find in the pages below. (Click here to go to Tracy’s site find out what else she does.)

I’ve been a reporter for a long time, but I’m a brand new author and as regular readers will have figured out by now, I firmly believe P2P (People 2 People) is the way of the future and so, with Tracy’s approval, I decided to first publish Elvis the Skunk Saves the Day online under a Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 license.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

If you (or, even better, your kids )  have any ideas for improving Elvis, please tell us at p2pnet @ shaw dot ca, or add your thoughts in a comment post under the story. Or if there’s something about it you don’t like, please let us know about that as well.

And —- we haven’t decided on a title, yet, so if  you or your kids have any ideas, we’d really like you to tell us what they are.

Not only but also,  I’d like to turn it into an animated short, so if there’s anyone out there who’d be interested ………..

We’ll eventually publish Elvis ourselves offline as well, in which case we’ll acknowledge anyone who made a significant contribution.

Thanks a lot.

Cheers! And all the best ……

Tracy and Jon

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Elvis was a skunk.

And because skunks have a terrible reputation for, well, evil smells, Elvis had a lot of trouble finding other kids to play with.

The ones who DID play hide and seek with him — sometimes — were outcasts like polecats and wolverines.

And there weren’t too many of them around either.

So Elvis spent a lot of time dreaming about how cool it would be to be a cute, cuddly little bunny — you know, someone everyone would want to play with.

Elvis was really nice.

Jet black with a velvety fur, he had a clean white stripe down his back, twinkly eyes, a pointy little nose and a big fluffy tail.

He was very, very friendly and you’d have thought he’d have plenty of friends.

But nope.

He didn’t.

So Elvis was a very sad, very lonely little skunk because every time he tried to play with the other animals, they’d all shriek, ‘Stinky Stinky Stinky!’ at the top of their voices and run away from him as fast as they could go, screaming with horror.

It was because they were all afraid he’d wave his great big fluffy tail in the air and WHAMMO! they’d have horrible stink stuff all over them.

They didn’t know skunks only spray when they’re very frightened and even before they do that, they fluff up their fur to make them look bigger than they really are.  Then they stamp their feet and growl and spit and stand on their front legs.

Only when none of this works do they squirt their horrible stink.  And then ………. WATCH OUT!!!

But Elvis didn’t even know he could even DO stinky stuff.

He’d never had to because he’d never been frightened before. Not even once. So he had no idea he could spray evil smelling clouds at anything that attacked him.

All he wanted to do was play, but every time he went over to the field near the woods, the same thing happened.

He’d see a squirrel, maybe, or a fox kits.   But as soon as they spotted him, they’d charge off as if something really bad was chasing them.

A while ago he’d spotted a young rabbit munching on some tasty clover.  He’d sneaked up to it and asked, ‘Want to play tag?’  But the rabbit had just looked at him like he was crazy and high tailed it away. Fast.

‘Don’t be frightened!’ - Elvis had shouted off to him.  ‘I won’t hurt you!’

But it was no good.  The little rabbit just took off, shouting, ‘Stinky stinky stinky skunk!’

And that made Elvis really, really sad because he wasn’t stinky at all.

His mummy and daddy thoroughly combed his furry tail before he went to bed every night.

And every morning, he’d carefully wash in the stream that ran near his house and then roll in sweet smelling grasses to dry himself.

So he was ALWAYS clean and fresh.

Very special pong-power  

On this very particular day, Elvis hung around the edge of the field for a while longer, hoping someone else might turn up and want to play.

But nobody did and he went sadly back to his little house at the edge of the woods where his mommy and daddy were getting dinner ready.

‘Daddy,” he said, ‘Why won’t anyone play with me?  And why do they all call me stinky?’

‘Well, Elvis,’ said his daddy, sitting him on his knee, ‘all skunks have this very special pong-power everyone, no matter how big, is frightened of. We can squirt stinky stuff all over anyone who looks as if they’re going to attack us.’

‘But I don’t even know how to DO that,’ said Elvis is hanging his head. ‘And even if I did, I wouldn’t.  All I want is to find someone to play with!’

‘You say that now,’ said his daddy.  ‘But I promise you — if anything ever threatens you from any direction, it’ll get a surprise it’ll NEVER forget.

‘You’ll squirt without thinking just as if you’ve been doing it all your life.’

While Elvis and his father were talking, his mummy had been making a delicious salad of fresh lettuce she’d sneaked from a nearby farmer’s garden. There were berries, insects and and bird eggs, and as soon as she’d set the table, she said, ‘Alright you two.

‘Dinner’s ready. ‘Eat!’

Elvis and his father sat down and were soon munching, washing everything down with crystal-clear water from the stream.  And as soon as dinner was finished, Elvis’ mother cleared the table and told him to get ready for bed.

‘Tomorrow’s another day,’ she said to him soothingly as she combed his tail.

‘Maybe you’ll see some young skunks in the field and you’ll be able to play with them.’

Something special was coming

Elvis woke up bright and early.

This was another day and who knew WHAT might happen?

He had a quick breakfast of berries left over from yesterday’s dinner.  His mummy would have made him a fresh breakfast if he’d waited, but he had a funny feeling something special was coming, and he wanted to be on his way.

After a much quicker than usual splash in the stream, he waddled off toward the meadow. (’Waddled’ is the correct word because skunks have short, stumpy little legs which means they’re not exactly swift.)

So Elvis waddled out of the shady green woods into the lush green meadow, lit with bright sunlight.

And right in front of him was the very same young rabbit he’d seen the day before, once again munching clover tops.

This time, though, the rabbit didn’t move. But he kept a very wary eye on Elvis,  ready to take off if he came any nearer.

Nor, this time, did Elvis say anything. Instead, he just kept his distance and watched the racket watching him.

And that’s how things stayed — Elvis and the rabbit, each with one eye on the other.

 Then suddenly, a speckled doe bolted from the other side of the meadow!

She ran straight past the rabbit and straight past Elvis, both of whom stared in wonderment as she vanished into the depths of the green forest.

A yearling with small, velvety horns, followed by a fawn and its father, glancing behind him with terrified eyes as he hurried his offspring along, was right behind the doe. And then 15 or 20 rabbits charged through the clover and long grass, followed by hundreds of mice and shrews and other small rodents, as well as clouds of birds of every shape and size, all running, hopping and flying as fast as they could go.

Elvis sat there, wondering what on earth had caused the flood of panic stricken creatures when came a tremendous, earth shaking THUMP!

And then another. And another. The noise was coming from the other side of the meadow.

As the thudding and thumping grew louder, the tops of the trees began to sway and a really really awesome stench like really smelly feet and really bad eggs swept from the woods, making Elvis gag and almost knocking him over.

As he sat there, overwhelmed by the terrible smell, a pair of squirrels hurtled past, one stopping just long enough to warn Elvis, ‘Run run there’s a giant coming and he’s eating everyone he can see!”

You LOOK tasty enough

Hardly had their words registered when Elvis saw a ji-normous head with scraggly black, knotted hair, huge, yellow, snaggly teeth, and terrible, horribly staring bloodshot eyes, poking high over the tops of the nearest trees.

By now, Elvis was the only creature in sight, everyone else having escaped into the woods.

So the giant couldn’t help but spot him.

‘Run, run,’  a terrified little voice inside Elvis said.

But he was rooted to the spot, watching with helpless fascination as the giant broke out of the woods, the horrible stench wafting in waves before him.

‘YOU won’t make much more than a mouthful,’ roared the giant as he strode across the meadow towards Elvis. ‘But you LOOK tasty enough.

‘Hehehehehehe.’

Elvis still hadn’t moved, but then a very strange thing happened.

As the giant stooped and stretched out his long, hairy arm with its knarly hand and talon-like fingers Elvis, without even thinking about it, curled his tail high over his head and let blast with a huge squirt of Stink !!!!!

The grass immediately in front of Elvis frizzled and a small cloud of busyily buzzing blue-bottle flies who’d traveled with the giant, feeding on the bits of food that were always stuck in his beard, instantly dropped out of the air, stone dead.

And the giant stood there, a puzzled expression on his face.

Elvis, still in the same position, fired another burst of skunk juice and this time, the giant let loose a horrible, wailing cry and, holding his nose, his eyes streaming, fled back into the forest as fast as he could, knocking trees over right and left as he went.

Naturally, the animals hiding in the forest behind Elvis had seen everything and after waiting for a few moments to make sure the giant really had gone, came back into the open, gathering around Elvis who was sitting there as surprised as everyone else by what had happened.

Luckily, a strong breeze had sprung up, quickly wafting away the stink.

Before Elvis knew it, he was surrounded by crowds of laughing, cheering, creatures, all patting them on the back and congratulating him for chasing off the giant.

‘Elvis, I’ll play with you anytime,’ said the young rabbit who’d returned with the others.

‘Us too, us too,’ chorus to the rest of the rabbits, who were quickly joined by all the other animals who were emerging from the woods now the coast was clear.

And now Elvis had another problem:

Who to play with out of all the animals who now wanted to be his friend.

What happened to the giant?

Well, he ran back to Giant Land where all the other huge and smelly giants lived.

But Elvis’ stink was so powerful that even they couldn’t stand it, and the giant who’d caused all the trouble in the first place was banished for ever.

And Elvis?

He became the Guardian of the Woods and even when he was grown up, he’d sit there on the edge of the meadow, ready to spring into action if ever another giant appeared.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 3:23 pm and is filed under P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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