"A Parable" The ten year anniversary

[num1mc]

It's time for a retrospective of this important piece of alpine history, and how it changed e-climbing forever.

 

Here's a story I just published in Trask's blog over on Ascentionist. I hope they like it.

 

Once upon a time there was an animal shelter. In the animal shelter there were all sorts of animals. This story is about 2 big rottweilers and a little male toy poodle. The rottweilers’ names were Gunter and Rorry and the little male toy poodle was called Princess.

 

Gunter and Rorry were friends from way back. They both used to work as prison guard dogs, but sadly due to some bleeding heart liberal politicians the prison was closed and Gunter and Rorry both got sent to the animal shelter. Unfortunately the animal shelter didn’t have all the excitement that a prison guard dog is used to, so Gunter and Rorry had to come up with fun things to do.

 

The first thing they did was start chasing all the cats at the shelter. That was fun for a while, but soon all the cats would hide whenever Gunter and Rorry came by and even if they did find one to chase it didn’t give them the same thrill it first did.

 

About that time Gunter and Rorry met this little toy poodle named Princess. Princess used to live with a nice old lady, but he just couldn’t stop humping the old lady’s leg, so she sent him to the shelter. At first either Gunter or Rorry would snarl at Princess, but despite that Princess kept following them around and eventually Gunter and Rorry let Princess hang out with them. Princess was a very excitable dog and whenever he’d get excited he’d end up pissing on the floor. All the other animals used chase Princess, but those days were over when he started hanging out with the 2 big rottweilers.

 

Now instead of chasing the cats and other animal Gunter and Rorry would send Princess ahead of them. Princess would start boasting loudly about how tough of a guard dog he had become and just as the other animals would start to chase him…Bam… Gunter and Rorry would jump out at the animals and start chasing and biting them. For you see Princess was acting as a decoy and all the time the other animals watched him the 2 big rottweilers were sneaking up behind them. This worked most of the time, but every once in a while Princess would get excited and start pissing on himself; when this happened Gunter and Rorry would be very angry and bite Princess. Princess would run away and whimper, but he’d always come back.

 

At first Gunter and Rorry would only attack the animals every once in a while, but soon they found themselves chasing and biting the other animals all the time. The two big dogs soon found other ways of entertaining themselves. They would sneak into the break room for the workers at the animal shelter and take a big dump. Also sometimes when the workers were feeding the animals the rottweilers would sneak up behind them and bite them on the ass. Princess would never do this; in fact sometimes when Gunter and Rorry weren’t around Princess would do tricks for the workers.

 

All this fun the big Rottweilers were having came to the attention of the animal shelter administrator. His workers used to come in and complain that the 2 big dogs had bit them and the neighbor’s of the shelter started complaining about all the noise coming from the shelter. Something had to be done.

 

This is what they did. One of the workers got some fencing and built a small kennel next to the shelter; then the other workers shot Gunter and Rorry with tranquilizer darts, and they moved them to the small kennel. When Gunter and Rorry came to they found themselves in a small kennel with a couple skunks and a badger. Sometimes they would try and mess with the badger, but he was pretty mean, and they soon found out that messing with the skunks wasn’t a good idea as I’m sure you’ve already guessed.

 

One of the walls of the kennel was a cyclone fence that looked in on the main shelter where Gunter and Rorry used to live. The two rottweilers would spend most of their time looking in on the main shelter looking for some of the cats and other animals they used to chase. Princess spent most of his time at the edge of the kennel talking to his two friends. Princess would run off sometimes and when he would come back he would tell Gunter and Rorry how he had been chasing cats. But the two rottweilers were suspicious, and sometimes when Princess would tell his stories he would start pissing and shaking.

 

 

Finally Gunter grew suspicious, and he told Princess that he didn’t think he was all that tough, and he never heard any noise from the main shelter when Princess claimed to be chasing animals. Gunter told Princess that if he ever wanted to be a big tough dog he would have to get himself put in the kennel just like he and Rorry were. He even told Princess that the two big dogs wouldn’t hang out with him unless he got put in the kennel.

Well Princess was scared, but eventually he screwed up the courage, and he ran into the administrator’s office. Princess jumped up on the administrator’s desk. His plan was to bite the administrator, but he got so nervous he started pissing right on some important papers the administrator was reading. The administrator picked Princess up by the ear and tossed him into the kennel with his 2 big friends.

 

Unfortunately things didn’t work out that well for Princess. Princess tried to chase the skunks, but they turned on him and chased him back to Gunter and Rorry and doused them all with skunk spray. When they could see again the two big dogs turned on Princess and ripped him to pieces. That was the end of Princess, but everything that happened in the kennel wasn’t sad. Rorry got adopted by a kindly, senile old man and went to live in an igloo in Alaska. The badger, who doesn’t figure into this story, got his own blog. Even Gunter didn’t stay in the Kennel forever. One day a man from a foreign country came and hired Gunter as a guard dog.

 

The moral of the story is

 

Things work out for everybody but the nervous little dog.

 

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