In the middle of a large desert (we say the middle: there is nothing on the horizon, it is purely flat, so who is to know?), at the top of a poplar tree (yes, there are poplar trees in the desert, populus euphratica), stands a little mouse, surveying his environment (the little mouse holds a pair of binoculars in his little paws — who makes binoculars for mice? I don’t know). He can’t remember for the life of him which direction he has come from (he hasn’t the wits to use the sun as a compass). He nudges his friend, the vole, to stop annotating his story with pedantic interjections (sorry, says the vole). He rubs his aching head. He needs to stop drinking.