The Arella Gets a Ranch

The Arella Gets a Ranch

The Sam Seymour Power Plant, as the Arella viewed it, was a magnificent series of geodesic domes set in the middle of a swamp southwest of Lake Fayette. It  had a storied  history that went back almost six hundred seventy years. In that time it had been a fossil fuel plant, a primitive fission power plant, an advanced fission plant, a fusion power plant, and finally recently a zero point power potential engine. It might indeed appear interesting for the strange person who was concerned by that history, but for the recently arrived Arella, Elizabeth Eclat Randal, she was not much interested in that history. She was here with the Texas governor; to understand why she was to be awarded the swampland around Lake Fayette.
 
It was certainly the most unusual situation for Elizabeth. The Reconciliation War was but a few months over, not quite a half year since the Kherab put the Powers-that-be down the Sagittarius Alpha garbage chute.  

The country at large was still coming to terms with the Avatar's and Chayote's recent incidental incineration of East Saint Louis, Illinois; in a 'Judgment of God episode', that probably would rattle the surviving political elite for decades to come. The Arella (That Service Weapon of Mass Destruction name still sounded strange to Elizabeth.), had her own consternation to overcome, when she was told in no uncertain terms that she was to take up her residence and duty for the City of Houston, Texas. The previous infamous city-hero, the Ghost Ranger proved to be less than a successful hero for it; in that he fomented sedition and participated in acts of mass-murder and attempted genocide. Never mind the uninteresting details, the Seraph genie-bottled him. Therefore, Houston needed a replacement hero. Someone decided poor Elizabeth would be the hero, so tagged as 'it'. Politics could be hilarious that way.                  

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Elizabeth had a very good idea of who tagged her for 'it', but right now as she shook hands with Governor  Thomas, 'Robar a los ricos dar á la obra' Gonzalez, she felt herself tingle with the electrical telepathic connection to that politician's nervous system. It took all of her finely honed saleswomanly skills she learned as Henri Valmonte's former wedding consultant and spokesperson not to retch plasma from her mouth, violently at the man's face, prompted as it was, by his disgusting diseased emotional touch upon her person.

She could suddenly see herself through the governor's eyes as she reads his thoughts. (He, internally grimaces in pain. He, externally, tries to force a smile as he feels his hand squeezed too tightly in the Arella's steel stamp press strong and not so gentle grip.). Elizabeth's emotions might be a little too honest here. The Arella quickly relaxes her grip so as not to let her righteous anger get away from her.

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Two false smiles flashed for the news-feeds. The fat short butterball governor, shook the hand of the tall orange glowing floating-in-mid-air red-headed woman, as if she was just a creaky, rusty old 19th century water pump. To a polyglot Texas polity assembled, they were not fooled by the sham friendship exhibited. At least one of the not-fooled thought hard at the Arella. 'You need to calm yourself, Liz, your aura is headed toward the ultraviolent violet.'      

'Thanks, Fred. I need that obvious reminder from you, now that I know the video feed goes out to a few billion people to see me glad-hand this 'gentleman'.' Elizabeth thought back sarcastically at her brand-new husband; the one friendly person somewhere lost in the largely anonymous crowd of ill-wishers present to see her meeted-and-greeted by the biggest crook currently not jailed, genie-bottled, or working the salt mines in Texas. Nevertheless she mentally calmed herself down, as she was taught, to mask her feelings so that her aura would not glow violet purple, a well known cue visible to the masses, so as to cause them to make the mad panic dash for the horizon in any and all directions, to escape her supposed angelic wrath. Elizabeth was not that much of a newbie 'angel' that she would allow that public relations disaster to occur.    
        
'Better, dear. Stop-glad handing the governor. He's starting to look like some malfunctioning steam-powered piston-armed chess-playing political robin-hood want-to-be Schachtürke.' Frederick Randall thought at her..

'Schachtürke? What is that?' thought the Arella, 'A chess-playing Turk?' Her machine-people calculator hind-mind dredged up the confimation definition. She abruptly halted the hand shake in progress. She stopped letting Thomas Gonzalez pump her arm up and down, while taking into account what the result might be from such a sudden action on her part. It was not as planned, but the expected result was just as exploitable. 

That quick stop was so sudden that the governor almost jerked himself into a broken wrist. He wound up tripping himself forward into the floating Arella's chest. He slammed into Elizabeth's sternum. He recoiled in shock as he bounced off what appeared to be a fulsome pulchritudinous iron-like statue as he felt the unforgiving impact. More importantly, he saw the glowering look on her face, which was evident to the governor as he looked up at her. He realized that he was a short fat Texan and she was a TALL Frenchwoman. This episode which was supposed to make him look good in front of the masses, actually tendered him as the prime boob in a three stooges comedy skit. It never occurred to him that the woman, he bounced off, would be as angry about the public humiliation she felt, because of the mutual collision, as he would be about it, himself.

If Robert Gonzalez had been a practical politician as Frederick Randal was about to deliberately now become, he would have backed away. He would instantly gallantly have apologized as a Spanish or Mexican don would have in days past. But Bob 'robar a los ricos para dárselo a los más merecedores, a saber, el propio' Gonzalez stood there stupidly, sort of fore-framed on video-feed against the orange-glowing hovering redhead in the most acutely awkward position imaginable for a politician. He was not caught redhanded with a dead woman's body in bed, but it was close enough for Texas.

This gave Frederick Randal the necessary public excuse to activate his one person flying platform force plate. He lifted-off from the middle of the onlooking throng of confused voters. He flew up to the speaker's platform, grabbed the flustered fat butterball Texas governor, who was a known schnook, by his left shoulder. Fred whirled Gonzalez around to face his cocked fist. He snarled at the startled governor, “How dare you insult my wife!” And so Fred punched that crook in the face so hard, that Gonzalez was flung sideways and backward on the speaker's platform into the waiting coterie of corrupt Texas Rangers, who caught the unfortunate governor like a triad of startled ten pins struck by a punched bowling ball. They, four, all went down together to the cheers of the mob, who instantly recognized their Texas-hero from the Battle of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The spontaneous crowd hoots and hollers that broke out, when Frederick wrapped his arms around his wife's waist, was sort of politically predictable. The Arella was quite a trophy wife to display. Their war hero had an angel for a wife? News that was for everyone present at the power-plant ceremony. But it had to be so true, because Frederick Randal kissed his bride and embraced her in full public display. And who could dare that dangerous action with a volatile angelic being if it were not so true, that he was protecting her honor from a known political sleaze-bag?

Texans were fickle, a bit wholey ignorant of physics and psychology, and very irrationally emotional when they were presented with the right cues to trigger them off. Their nascent Know-Nothing dislike of the Arella turned into a mass Texas protective instinct as they adopted her as one of their 'own' shamefully wronged in public. You might almost suspect that Robert Gonzalez had been very carefully selected for his part of the public goat: that this whole show was staged to produce an intended result.

As the Arella and the war-hero waved at the throngs, she, Elizabeth, leaned over to her husband and whispered into his ear behind a bright glow that no camera could pierce and a screen of dazzle, both in light and in body language, that not even a truth-reader could penetrate, “See, Fred, I told you it would work out exactly right.”

Frederick Randal, waving with his free left arm and open hand at the well-wishers in the mob present; and to the news-feeds audiences in the broader universe receiving it all, replied , “Iffy. It could have backfired, but now that we've pulled it off, Liz, what else do you have working in that scheming little mind of yours?”      
                           
“Gonzalez arrested and tried for his crimes against Texas of course. How would you like to own this radioactive swamp for our residence; free, and clear as we champion Houston, together?” the Arella suggested. She waved expansively to the crowd who misinterpreted her gesture as meant for them, when she actually meant the poisoned land she was supposed to detoxify as her first act as Houston's new city-hero, the whole ostensible reason the governor invited her to the Sam Seymour ZIPPY^2 power-plant in the first place..

“Please tell me you are not going to populate it with dinosaurs or assorted alien monsters.” Fred half-mockingly asked his wife. He knew that she could. Pilot Knob and the Ozarks were a prime example of the possibility, that first example, being a case of an Avatar angel's twisted sense of zoological dinosaur follies or mammalian saber-toothed tiger humor.^3  The Virginia Capes,^4 as another cruel arcane oddity, boasted a Behemoth of all things, as the Seraph's other 'pet dog', while super zombie-bots^5 patrolled the perimeter of fabled Mount Hallett compound next to radioactive Boulder Lake for the supposedly sane and equanimity minded Kherab; so it was just possible that for Elizabeth Eclat Randal, that she would dig up some oddities of her own to post as her no-trespassing signs. Angels seemed to have that common feature about them as much as the invincibility and the glowing aura attributes they shared.        

The Arella cooed at him with a wicked cherubic smile on her face, “I was thinking about de-extincting some Binars' long-horns and cultivating Yellow Rose Beef Trees.”

Frederick Randal inwardly groaned. The Arella fully intended, for 'reasons', to 'keep-up-with-the-Joneses'; which meant she wanted to have her own unique monster menagerie!^6

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^1 Simon Weissman, the Ghost Ranger. (See “Two Weddings and a Burglary”.)

^2 Zero Point Power or ZIPPY is a highly theoretical tapping of the vacuum energy state to generate electricity. Frankly the standard model, now that the Higgs Field is a more known quantity, says 'no' to that idea in real physics as understood now.    
       
^3 The Missouri State Zoo, and Dinosaur Habitat. Noted for live Jurassic and Triassic dinosaurs and every vicious once-extinct Cenozoic mammal known. The Avatar keeps her home (Pilot Knob) in the middle of it. Nobody bothers her much.

^4 Lassie the Behemoth is a monster of biblical proportions, that Susan de Vries takes for walks along her beachfront property at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Nobody bothers her much, either.  

^5 Super Zombie-bots are mindless living dead Humans who were given the Avatar renormalization treatment. These were part of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal garrison defeated and captured in the Reconciliation War in the overall Battle for Denver. (see 'Two Weddings and a Burglary'). The Kherab keeps a platoon of the monsters, as her personal pets, to watch over Specimen Mountain, Flattop, and especially her home base of Mount Hallett.

^6 Stay tuned folks, carnivorous long-horned cattle and giant perambulating meat-eating trees are just around the corner!

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It's called plot foreshadowing, reader.

Oh, the Yellow Rose Of Texas is a flower-bearing tree,
That's dumber than a grapefruit. I think it's chasing me.
From the way he's foliated, I've got this sneaky hunch,
That when he catches up to me, I'm going to be his lunch!

Oh, the arbor flora farum has a six foot yellow bloom
That sticks to me like Velcro (TM). It stinks of cheap perfume.
It wraps itself around me. It stops my piercing scream.
It's worse than the Amoeba, that ate me in my dream!          

Oh, the Texatis fulva vulva is a panic-stricken tree.
It flops around upon the ground. It pulverizes me.
I'm the case of indigestion that causes it to scream.
I'm worse than the Amoeba, that ate it in its dream!  

The perambulator staggers just like a drunken bee.  
A few shakes from his pulpy fronds; then he releases me.
I'm thankful for my blessings, I'm grateful. Yes; indeed!
For the case of herbicide I ate, because I cannot read!  

Oh, the Yellow Rose of Texas, he made a big mistake.
I wonder if he's a roaster, or if he will have to bake.
I bit him in the blossom, he tastes just like a cow.
That's curtains for this stupid tree, I'm going to eat him NOW!  

Oh, the Yellow Rose of Texas, he's a turning on a spit.
No oven built can hold him, I'm barbecuing it.
He sure smells delicious, his aroma is a fine delicacy;'
Cause nothing in the wood, smells so good, as a Yellow Roast Beef Tree.

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Nothing too unpredictable occurred in the aftermath of the Sam Seymour ZIPPY power-plant dedication fiasco; other than the same corrupt Texas Rangers (Former friends of Simon Weissman, see the footnote above, for who he is. Author.), who got bowled over at the ceremony, beat Frederick Randal to the Governor Gonzalez arrest. This was the one something that the Arella had not anticipated. So she fumed in frustration as the new 'Wrecker of Worlds' was thus denied his next opportunity to grab off favorable press coverage. When Frederick Randal returned from the governor's mansion empty-handed, she was waiting for him mit dem Sturm und Donner kamen in die Hände und die lila und schwarz gestreiften tigerish böse Aura leuchten mit ihm zu gehen.

The aforementioned 'Wrecker' landed his air-car just outside the fused translucent frosty ice-palace-like geodesic castle, and jumped off his levitator to just now notice that his wife, floating outside it. She, who it was the one building the old homestead, was a wee tiny midgely upset, probably with him. Since she was not tele-radioing him, he was not getting all the cues that he normally received to warn him, that he was deep in trouble with her. But her presxent ultra-violet-violent aura could be a big clue as to what he could expect to meet as he came through the front door to the new honeymoon homestead cave. He went up the bare brown packed earthen lawn to the half arch portico. She followed him floating into the domicile, after the Wrecker. Fred immediately noticed that she made 'improvements' from the last time he saw the inside of the over-sized igloo.  

“You decided on an open space concept with platform living spaces, like the Christmas tree ornament crazy apartment we had when we lived on the Moon?” he jested, aloud, as he walked toward the indigo-orange glowing pillar of harder than the toughest Pittsburgh steel upset woman. She refused to let Fred kiss her.

Now the Arella used her radio-telepathy to respond. 'No, Fred, I wanted to imitate the Seraph's fatalistic idea of living suspended by a mono-filament moral thread.' she thought at him, sarcastically.

Frederick frankly understood from the one year experience, that Elizabeth and he had been together as husband and wife, that it was Elizabeth's way to not lash out at him, in standard anger when he failed in some way. She would  default to just small-talk about irrelevancies. She saved up her annoyances like a cat, infuriated by a particularly smart-Alex mouse.  He also knew that it would only work as a release valve for her; to keep him out of her wrath; if he was the one to directly address the irrelevancies that concerned the growing differences which separated them at the moment. He said, “I am sorry that I missed the timing on the governor. I know that mistake sets back your plans a bit.” It was his attempt at an immediate apology.

'Well, I suppose it is my fault for not planning the snatch better.' agreed the Arella, as she sadly thought about the blown opportunity Fred frustrated. She still blamed him. She floated over to hover over a divan, a rather garish rococo piece of furniture that displayed what was seriously wrong with the Arella's European-centered taste in art in Frederick Randal's opinion. She let the Earth's gravity suddenly take her mass and yank her down. CRUNCH. No more divan, which was probably a blessing, since it clashed with the rest of the furniture, the Arella chose, which was more of the French Tenth Empire Modern Style of Ugly in form. She buried her face in a double-handed face-palm as she came to her sudden stop on top of the splintered and shattered couch. 'I just bought it!' she radioed out in an exasperated general broadcast, aimed at no-one in paricular..

Fred, the objexctivist scientist, pointed out to his wife, aloud; “It was never meant to hold your three hundred kilogram beauteous mass in a nine point eight meter acceleration field.” the second-rate physicist, who was Frederick, when he was not selling insurance, observed.  Randal could safely make this small joke, because he could see the saffron laugh colors break out in the Arella's aura as she laughed with him at her ridiculous situation, brought on by that moment of gravity influence inattention to detail..

Elizabeth, then reminded him about their finances, 'We are out of money honey. So I have not ordered dinner flown in.'  This produced the expected disappointed frown on Frederick's face. He had worked up quite an appetite, even though he had mission failed her, and probably did not deserve such a treat. The Arella, however, wanted her husband happy, so she decided she could put a smile there on his face, if she suddenly went a bit overboard on a home prepared dinner instead; so she made ready to hunt a little wild deer or pig. A little matter of poaching could be added to the illegal land squatting, she supposed, as the way things tended in their currently financially strapped conditon. So she put on her weather cloak and toned down her glory to a faint orange glow. There was no need to let the dinner know, that  she was coming toward it to shoot it. Little mercies, you know? She radioed to her husband, as she headed out the window, 'You can set the table, dear. I will be back with a cooked deer or pig, in about ten minutes.'

Frederick Randal shrugged at the estimate. He thought; 'I am tired of razorbacks and Bambis.'
           
Elizabeth picked up that stray thought; 'Can you suggest an alternative?' the Arella asked her husband, as she was halfway passed through the window.

“The usual will be fine.” said the Wrecker.  

The Arella stopped suddenly,  'I could go into the Gulf and bring us some French gruntfish or some stripers?'

“Stick to the wild boars, Liz. Neither of us has a commercial fishing license.” Fred said. Elizabeth guffawed. Frederick Randal was serious. “I mean it, Liz. We cannot afford the legal hassles and the fines, if we poach into restricted off shore fisheries and you are caught.”

 The Arella shrugged; 'Porky Pig it is. Ten minutes, I promise.' she asserted.

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As the Arella flew home from the latest board meeting, (Home these days now being a cluster of tents pitched by Lake Fayette at Park Prairie Park Point, a whole kilometer and a half from the glass golf-ball main residence and the adjacent new A-frame annex houses that were bare of the Randall's domestic presence, because the buildings were being used as temporary charity shelters for the homeless.); she expected to see her husband barbecuing the pig she shot in her latest poaching expedition into Matagorda for food. Since she ate about ten hogs a day, and he ate a haunch himself; she had to range further and further afield lest she debilitate the local sus scrofa population to the point of no recovery. Not that the surrounding ranchers minded the lessened competition with their cattle, but even the dimwitted Texas, Wildlife and Game Management Department personnel might notice the depredations and connect the dots on her and try to arrest her for her illegal poaching on protected no-hunting lands. That could be publicly embarrassing.        
         
Fred was not where he was supposed to be. And no pig? The Arella was annoyed by that sudden discovery. 'Is he turning out to be alike unto the Chayote's Herodotus de Gabrielle? Will I have to keep him on a short leash?' she thought. 'Where is he?'
   
 Good question, where was the absent “Wrecker of Worlds”? The eyes of Texas are upon him, you know?

"Where IS the Wrecker of Worlds Now?" 


^10 Blue Belle and the Yellow Avenger (Blue Belle et le Vengeur Jaune.), is a situation comedy show (Made in France of course), very loosely based on the early exploits of the two angelic partner heroes, Susan de Vries (the Seraph), and Karen Aster (the Avatar), known as the Big Blue Bird of Unhappiness or just Big Blue (Susan) and the Azure Avenger or the Angel of Death (Karen),  to the crooks, aliens, and assorted riff-raff who ran afoul of them in real life. On the show, the main villain was an English mad scientist, named Le Destructeur. There were other villains of course; such as Capitaine Comédie, (The above mentioned clown.), whose specific episode appearances were always timed to appear when the Yellow Avenger looked as if she was about to generate a love-life. The love-life would be derailed by the evil-doer farceur, Capitaine Comédie, in a hilarious (To the French naturally.), plot. Capitaine Comédie. who did it, because the aforesaid villain, avid show watchers knew, was secretly in love with the Yellow Avenger.
   
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Naturally, the Arella, hunting around for the missing Frederick, once she saw the meteorite man fall from the sky, stopped and hovered to see what would be the outcome of the impact event that hit New Ulm; Texas, (A city founded by captured Nazi rocket scientists from the American First Imperial Age.). She thought for a moment, that she might have to intervene, somehow, once the super buffoon wrestler, a variation of the Mister Maximum type modified human being, who called himself "The Block" impacted into New Ulm. The comedy that ensued yielded some minor humor for her (Pig, crater and the villain wrestler in the archaic unstylish 24th century Marine battle armor.), but did not require her special attention or activity. Her husband showed up and dealt with it instead, so that explained why he was not at home where he belonged, barbecuing the pig she wanted to eat, now.
    
Frederick transmitted to her. ;'Sorry, I am running late, Liz. Had a little meteor to investigate, but you know about that by now, do you? Anyway, you will find the hog in the microwave range ready to be fried. Just push the button and when the timer pings, he will be ready to eat.'

Elizabeth turned around to head back to Park Prairie Park Point, toward the tents that the Wrecker and she called home. 'Where did Fred find the money for a microwave oven? And where can you find a microwave oven in this post Reconciliation War era big enough to cook a whole hog?' she wondered.
     
She landed with a soft thud. She went to the central mosquito-net screened pavilion tent where Fred and she currently ate their meals. She was careful to step around the anchored guy wires that held the tent pegged in place. Last night, she had carelessly tripped over a line and pitched headfirst into the tent, causing it to collapse. Worse, she had broken the stone rough-hewn dining room table and one of the chairs she had made that previous day; wasting a lot of her homemaking effort in the shattering of that furniture. Not to mention she had ruined last night's dinner when she splattered the roasted hog, the wild onions and the apple cobbler all over creation.
     
This time; she saw that a new dining table (made of twelve point crystal iron and hopefully Arella goof-proof.), and a squarish rock replaced the furniture she broke yesterday. 'So Fred worked that out?' she thought. 'Too bad he did not think about dinner plates and silver-ware when he glued those pieces back together.' She set about grabbing hunks of shattered furniture that lay outside the tent in a jumbled pile, 'As if Fred knew I would need this detritus to make plates, forks, spoons and knives? I hope  my hubby likes stone-aged American modern dinnerware, because I sure do not know how to transmute matter well, yet.' she muttered to herself. 'Do we need a place-serving mat-set? Sure... why not.' She finished the last plate setting set, when Frederick finally  showed up. He knocked on a tent pole to let her know he was present and ready to eat.

"Bravo, Liz, but you forgot to take the hog out of the microwave, so it is burned to a crisp. besides; You still need to make some serving dishes to put the food out onto the table.” said the wry-smiling Wrecker of Worlds. “I can at least claim that I managed to accomplish most of my to-do lists for today, while still being sidetracked by those wrestler clowns and their reality show in New Ulm.”    

“So, that is the explanation for the meteor? A wrestling match?” the Arella inquired, coyly, as she fashioned a tureen out a fragment of very large rock that looked like a Odawan era hand ax that Mighty Joe Young might have fashioned and used sometime during the American First Empire age, according to the latest episode of “Blue Belle and the Yellow Avenger”. 'Of course; if you relied on that entertainment-feed for your real history, you were a candidate for the Brooklyn Bridge real estate con-game, to be followed by a court-ordered, mandated against your will, stay at the Texas State Home For the Perpetually Puzzled.' She added, “What exactly did you accomplish, else, while I finished the takeover of the Weissman Insurance Group for you?”
     
“Well,” Fred said as he poured out some kind of soup-like gravy from a bag into the stone tureen the Arella finished making. “I managed to swing a sweet side deal with the Seraph. She will have her machine people business cronies turn our iron lump of collateral, you collected from the Asteroid Belt, into an orbiting manufactory and space-hotel, as a sort of post honeymoon present for us.” He went to the microwave oven, which the Arella discovered was an ex-military radar transceiver pointed at the now charred hog on a target grate at which the radar was pointed. That mess was supposed to be dinner? Fred pulled out a variable knife from his belt. He carved away the outer blackened crumbly crust on the blackened smokey lump. “You will have to get another hog, dearest. Most of this pig is nothing but charcoaled ash. You might be able to eat it, my angel darling, because you can eat mesons and all of that other subatomic stuff; but it is not fit for normal Human consumption. You know... for people like me?”
     
The Arella looked outside the tent. One quick sweep of her enhanced senses showed her no Sus Scrufus were within easy reach. “Sorry, Fred. You willll have to settle for an alligator. There are no pigs within a half hour of us. Even at Mach Eight.” The Arella took careful aim.
     
ZAPOW! That sort of took care of providing an instant meat dish and the cooking of it, in one shot. Normally Elizabeth did not like electrocuted lizard meat as a main course, but when you live like a Neanderthal; she supposed, you had to eat like one. “I shot an alligator, in the lake. Now, you go out there, skin and dress him, Fred. No sense wasting the hide.” She fashioned a meat plate platter, a carving knife and a three-pronged skewer out of some leftover appropriately-sized stone table bits. She might not be able to transmute matter, yet, but she she could smelt the stone into a reasonable facsimile of plasteel, even though it was crystalline silicon-based, and looked like a fragile piece of glass. The ladle spoon came next.
     
Fred said; “You just keep that stuff up, and soon we'll be back in the geodesic domicile golf ball nightmare; you started up two weeks ago.” He meant it as a jest.

The Arella was not laughing. “It is not available for us at the moment. The state commandeered it as a homeless shelter for Reconciliation War refugees. Fred, you said you took care of most of your to-do list, today. Does that actually include a place for us to live that we own, and a steady income for us, that we need before I can draw sany salary from the insurance company I took over?”
     
Fred turned serious as he pulled together a tarp. He sorted his knives and rope on it, that he would need to skin, dress and haul back Mister Alligator; who was floating belly up and still smoking in Fayette Lake  about two dozen meters from the distant boat ramp and dock at the point. That whole assemblage was a goosd half kilometer from the dinner tent. “I talked to the Parks Service folks about Fayette Lake and the lands around it and the Sam Seymour Power Plant reswerve, while I was in Austin. I told them about the Missouri state zoological garden for the Avatar and said that Texas should not allow Missouri to put that one over on the Longhorn State, so...”

“Let me guess? That Longhorn, you hsave grazing outside the sleep tent is Austin's answer to your query?” guessed the Arella.

“That 'longhorn' actually would be your latest honeymoon present from the Service; with General Karen Aster's austere compliments.” Frederick explained, naming the Avatar as the source of the cow and the benefactress. “She rushed the prototype here from Fort Dietrich, Maryland, that she did, to make sure our land-use claim for preservation of an endangered species was actually legal. More of them are on the way to stock our ranch in accordance with Texas ecological regulations. But we still  have a problem, love.”  
      
The Arella was all ears. “What could that problem be?”
      
“We need a Bos Lignum Flavum Rosa Texastis” Fred laughed. “In fact we need a herd of them.”
     
The Arella spluttered, “A herd of yellow-rosed beef-trees? Are you NUTS, Fred? That was a JOKE when I suggested it to you!”
     
“Got to have two endangered species.” the Wrecker explained. "The Game and Wildlife Commission insists upon it."
    
“I actually know what the Texas land use law says, Fred. It's Chapter 211 of the Texas Local Governance Code which says that its purpose is to promote the public safety, morals and general welfare and to preserve places of historical, architectural, cultural or biodiversity significance. Nowhere in that complete drivel, does it say that we have to have two endangered species present to justify the existence of a ZOO!”    
                   
“That, darling, would actually be codified under Title 13. Sports, Amusements, and Entertainment. Subtitle D: Other Amusements and Entertainment. Chapter 2152. Regulation of Circuses, Carnivals and Zoos.” Fred said.

The Arella was gobsmacked. “Circuses?”

 “Yup.” agreed the Wrecker. “The same laws that allowed that corny wrestling act on the entertainment feed that I broke up, require that we have at least two animal acts for public display.” Fred headed down to the point to go collect the alligator before its fellows in the lake converged on it and robbed the Randals of their evening meal. 'Let Elizabeth cogitate on how her jests can turn into ridiculous reality.' Fred thought. 

The Arella went outside the dining room tent, and stepped up into the air at a low hover. She kept watch over the nearby lake-shore for Texas Rangers, wildlife game wardens and other alligators so that her husband would not have to indulge in any Tarzan heroics when he brought back the cooked lizard.  
        
Fred radioed pedantically at her. 'I am here, but I do not see the alligator. Ah, there he is!'  Fred jumped into the water with a splash to swim out and catch his prize, so the radio-telepathy was about to become scratchy and staticky at this point. He could not receive the Arella's radioed warning, that an alligator she saw with her enhanced vision, had left its mud flat on the lake bank and was moving towards Fred's position, closing in to chomp him. So why waste the effort? Even, if she had bothered to send it, it would not have changed the immediate danger. But her eye's lasers sending twin invisible light beams to sizzle that archosaurian's nose, from seven hundred meters away, were another method to let the Wrecker know that less chatter from him and more attention to snagging the electron-sizzled Wallygator and getting out of Lake Fayette Dodge, for him, was in order.
       
Fred eventually swam the first electrocuted alligator out of the lake. The reptile weighed in at about 350 kilograms, so when the Wrecker beached it, he called out aloud to the Arella,  "Liz, give me a hand with this carcass?:"  

The Arella zipped down from where she originally hovered over the dinner tent to float above Fred and the beached alligator. Fred looked up at her and asked, “Well?”                

Elizabeth shrugged, reached down and grabbed the scaly monster by its tail. She hoisted it aloft with the ease that one would expect from such an angel who could demolish Saturn with her bare hands inside six hours. She flew the alligator to a spot where she adjudged Fred could tend to the de-hiding and the carcass dressage without nosey pesky game wardens disturbing him. There, in a convenient tree-hide she dropped the alligator. KAWHUMP.  She asked her husband coyly. “Do you want me to dress it and cook it for you, too, Fred?” She, with the strength to crush matter down to its neutron crystal state between her hands, could easily peel the alligator's skin off with scapular precision with her fingernails. With her eye lasers and with electro-blasts from those same hands, she had a choice of various methods to finish cooking what she had electrocuted in the first place.

Fred knew French sarcasm when he heard it and knew how to answer it. “I will take it from there, Liz.”