Books: An Abridged Existence (excerpt)

“Yeah, I’m sure that that stupid kid has all sorts of enemies. He’ll never know who to blame. Giving us time to escape, and take it on the lam.”

“I concur. Let’s get back to the lab, Jen might be there any minute,” Sid remembers.

After a short drive, they arrive back at Carl’s laboratory. The sun has set, and things are growing darker and darker outside. They go in and turn on the lights and wait for Jen to arrive.

About half an hour later, Jen arrives, with a lot of yarn and cheap clothes for the scarecrows. She has many different colors of yarn. She has brown, yellow, black, red, and even an electric blue color, for a punk rock anime chick scarecrow.

They begin wadding up newspapers, and stuffing pants and shirts with the it. They decide to save their straw for the ends of the pants and sleeves, and also decide to have some poking out around the necks of the scarecrows. After several hours of stuffing, they realize that they had no way to attach the upper torso to the legs, and no way to attach the head to the upper torso.

“Well, that is a bit of a pickle,” comments Jen.

“Don’t worry, for I have . . . duct tape!!!” Carl says, giving a dramatic pause for the duct tape, and pulling it from a pile of stuff on a desk in his lab.

Carl first puts the rods through the scarecrows, this giving them support. They are then duct taped together, and the heads are put on. Next the hair is also duct taped on as well.

After seven hours of working on scarecrows, they have five that stand upright, but must lean against something for support, and another 4 that can only sit on the ground. Sid notices that the scarecrow’s lack faces. He quickly finds a marker on a cup on a desk, and begins going around to the scarecrows drawing faces on them. They look somewhat comical; however, some of the scarecrows look downright evil and scary.

“Well, it’s about 4 am, let’s go set them up now, while it’s still dark out,” Carl recommends.

They load up the cars, and Carl leads them to the park. They spend about half an hour setting up the scarecrows, and another half looking for a payphone to call the newspapers. After all this is done, they retreat back to Carl’s laboratory, and crash there for a while. Luckily, Jen does not have to work the next day, and is able to crash for more than an hour.

“And that’s one hack successfully planned and executed in a day,” Carl notes, tiredly but with some enthusiasm.