Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Pebbles started in bellowing but she didn't know why, so at first she just bellowed randomly.

"Oh my!" she bellowed. Then, "the end is near!"

Then "death and taxes!"

"My innards!" she bellowed, as it began to dawn on her that something was happening to her but from the inside out. How diabolical. Usually when things happen to you they happen from the outside in, like when you step on a fence staple, that happened once when she was helping the farmer, my goodness that hurt and she had to get a shot afterward but in the end she got a lot of nice treats and went on free range for two days so the fence staple incident could not be considered entirely a bad thing and maybe this would turn out the same, with her getting a lot of special snacks, maybe Lori would even come over with the real fig newtons, not the knockoff convenience store fig newtons the farmer always buys that she eats out of politeness.

"Dios Mio!" she bellowed, lapsing into her native Oregonian.

Unfortunately her cries did not fall on deaf ears.

"Can you please put a sock in it?" the brutish Terra Belle asked threateningly, all pretend safety-patrol courtesy.

"I cannot hear myself eat," frumped Poppy.

"Zip it," insisted Belle Pepper.

Just then Pebbles spotted her BFF Ivy through the gate. Ivy alone seemed to care.

"Ivy!" she bellowed.

"Pebbles!" bellowed Ivy.

"I am going to kill both of you," seethed Eo.

This went on no joke I am not kidding for the next twelve hours. The farmer came and made a nest for Pebbles in the barn aisle, then went to look for the chainsaw ear muffs. The rest of the day the farmer walked around wearing ear muffs while we all suffered, but not in silence, the blessed Sound of Silence, in restless dreams I walked alone, and the vision that was planted in my brain, etc and so on.

Finally it got dark and Pebbles dropped her decibels down into the tolerable range.

"Ivy," she burbled.

"Pebbles," whispered Ivy, hunched under the feeder where she could not be t-boned.

Then Pebbles really went into labor, while the farmer tried to read "The Goldfinch" on a Kindle. At 4 in the morning she popped out a pair of fat buckskin twins, identical to their mother in every way, except for one being a girl and one being a boy.

"Oh," she said. "I see."

"Pebbles!" cooed Ivy. The farmer snored in a chair.