The Obituary of Private Pecker

"The day seems extraordinarily long through the eyes of a wombat that has been deserted on an island with several hungry alligators. So you can imagine what Private Pecker felt like. He was marooned on an island among a hundred salivating alligators and the enemy major, because he didn't like Pecker and was also an evil wizard, turned him into a wombat. Now, one might argue there are several reasons why you wouldn't like a man named Private Pecker. First, his name is Pecker. Men in the army could not bring themselves to utter a word that in itself, was offensive for no reason. So they called him PeePee for short. That did not help. So it angered them further. Private Pecker's persistence at trying to have the men damn themselves by calling his name out loud bothered a lot of people. He was widely held as a moronic, drooling, annoying person with bad table manners. This, of course, wasn't true and it hurt Private Pecker deeply. In truth, the Peckers came from a long line of ancestors with impeccable table manners.

In any case, table manners wouldn't help you much in a situation such as this, you will understand me if you are a wombat and have chanced upon a feeding frenzy of a bunch of savage alligators out of sheer curiosity. So Private Pecker, staunchly abhorred by all his close friends and relatives, was promptly eaten alive by a rather irritable alligator who wasn't too pleased with a wombat's bold intrusion into its basking time, widely regarded among alligators as their 'Me time', when the responsibilities of family life take a back seat, and they're free to yawn, eat their young or just swat flies. Now you might think that alligators are stupid, but never, friend, underestimate the sheer iron weight of their tail or the snappiness of their jaws. It's not surprising that they're strong. Their terrestrial life is a series of unavoidable push-ups. You might also think that Private Pecker's military training, if nothing else, would at least have made him adept at killing alligators. The phrase "Well, if Ace Ventura could do it..." comes to mind. But you must remember that Private Pecker's efficiency as a combatant cannot be gauged by his gross failure to throw a punch as a wombat. It is widely held by none who were present that the intrepid marine tried to engage the enemy in hand-to hand combat when really, he should have just thrown caution to the wind and run.

Case in point, I firmly believe, sir, that raising an army of wombats to maintain order when we clearly lack the necessary experience or the funds to train them is very inadvisable and a rather cruel waste of innocuous furry creatures. Personally, I prefer your idea of flying alligators via parachute into the area of threat to clear it. Then someday, when we have achieved the impossible, we shall send an army of wombats to clear the alligators before we can take over."