Picture Day Has Come Again

It was picture day in the forest once again and this year it was the Owl's responsibility to get everyone gathered and ready. This year the Owl decided it might be fun to have everyone come up with an idea of their own theme for the picture. That way everyone had a chance to express their unique individuality.

This backfired on the Owl immediately. It backfired so spectacularly and so completely it actually made the Owl question his own sanity. What was wrong with him that he thought everyone having their own theme would be a good idea for a group photograph?

Actually, now that we've phrased it that way, the Owl got where everything went wrong.

The Snake showed up wearing a bow tie.

The Bear showed up wearing a sweater he knitted himself.

The Opossum showed up with tye-dyed t-shirts she hoped everyone else would wear while she herself wore a solid black turtleneck. Her theme was color conquers darkness.

And so on, and so on...

The Owl was scrambling. This was going to be the worst group picture yet. It was going to look horrible. The Crow came up to her and said that he wanted to take his picture facing away from the camera as a commentary on society turning its back on everyone.

I mean, if you give folks a chance to be complete kooks they're going to take it. Never ever underestimate how much of fundamental kook folks can be.

The Owl was trying to figure out a way to wrangle everyone together for a decent picture when she made a simple realization. The cat was already out of the bag (literally and figuratively, that was the cat's theme) There was no way to reign this in. knew she had one shot and one shot only to make this work before it went completely off the rails. She had to gather everyone for one perfect 'before' picture.

The Owl stood on a stump and in her best middle school teacher organizing a field trip voice, she announced:

"Okay, all you beautiful folks with such wonderful themes, I have one quick announcement that we need to make."

"Can you do it quickly? My theme is I have to pee real bad, and I'm doing it by method acting!" Shouted a Mouse.

"Okay, that's... that's not really a... okay whatever it's your theme," The Owl conceded, though happy to use the urgency to her advantage, "I want one quick picture of everyone here out of your theme just for reference and then we'll do all of the theme pictures, okay!"

All the animals looked around and thought this was a pretty reasonable request. They all quietly organized themselves into neat rows accounting for height and spacing. Within moments they had self-organized themselves and were ready for a group picture.

The Owl was quite frankly shocked. The yearly group photo had never been organized so quickly and so efficiently. She had somehow managed to turn what seemed like certain disaster into a wonderful triumph.

"Okay, let me just set the timer and we're ready!" The Owl said as she quickly got off the stump to set everything up.

"Please hurry! I am really close to running out of time!" The Mouse, yelled, kind of desperately.

The Owl obliged, she set the time, ran to her spot and a picture was taken. All the animals relaxed and started moving to prepare for their themed group pictures.

"Hang on! One more for safety!" The Owl shouted.

"Oh, jeez!" Complained the Mouse.

The animals scrunched back together and took another picture. Once the picture was taken the Owl breathed a huge sigh of relief. Everyone got together for what they believed to be the real group picture. However, many of the themes clashed or overlapped. For example, the opossum could only recruit a few people to wear tie-dye shirts. The snake wearing a bow tie didn't want to stand next to the cat in the bag and the mouse said he could only be on theme for one or two more pictures.

While the rest of the day’s pictures were certainly chaotic the Owl stayed the whole time and took in the scene. To her, there was no better example of what she loved about the forest and all her friends. They were diverse, creative, silly, and wild, but when it came down to it, they could work together and be respectful of one another.

Or they were at least willing to do so, for as long as a Mouse was able to hold his pee.