The Copenhagen Musicians

There was once a polar bear who had labored at being a good polar bear for his entire life. He splashed around the arctic seas, roamed the polar ice, hunted and ate seals, mated and fathered cubs. In short, he did the kinds of things that polar bears were supposed to do. As he entered polar bear old age, however, he found that his world no longer had a place for him. The ice was melting, and the seals were less plentiful and didn't taste as good. And the female polar bears ran and swam faster than he did. And so the Polar Bear made a momentous decision.

"I will go to Copenhagen," said the Polar Bear to himself. "I have heard that the world's most famous musicians are gathering there, and perhaps I can get a gig in a band. I don't have any musical experience, but I have a lovely baritone roar, and I'm sure the famous musicians will be able to help me refine it."

So off he went. He hadn't been traveling for more than a week, when he encountered a disheveled, woebegone pika by the side of the road, begging for lichens.

"Well, you're a bit below your altitude, aren't you, little ... rabbit-like thingy?" asked the Polar Bear.

"Yikes!" chirped the Pika. "You look rather predatory to me. What big teeth you have. And all that."

"Never fear," said the Polar Bear. "You look like you'd take more energy to digest than you'd give back in nutrition. Anyway, you appear to be a bit down on your like, like me. So what gives?"

"Well you may ask," sighed the Pika. "It's getting too hot up in the alpine meadows. It's killing off the plants I eat and wreaking havoc with my feeding schedule. Not to mention that the snow I rely on for insulation when it does get cold is melting. So I thought I'd try my luck down here."

"Then this is your lucky day," said the Polar Bear. "I'm going to Copenhagen to be a musician. Why don't you come along?"

"Because it seems a damn fool thing to do," replied the Pika. "Heck, the only musical thing I can do is squeak a little."

"Why, the very thing!" said the Polar Bear encouragingly. "Your squeak will counterpoint my roar! Don't worry about your inexperience. The world's most famous musicians are gathering in Copenhagen. They will be sure to teach us what we need to know."

So the Pika, against his better judgment, joined the Polar Bear on his quest. But these quests never stop at two, as you well know. After another couple of days, our travelers overtook a bedraggled bird, hitchhiking by the side of the road.

"I say," said the Polar Bear. "You don't look like a naturally land-bound creature. What's up with you?"

"I'm a petrel," spat the Petrel. "Don't you know that birds give up flying as soon as they can? Take the dodo, for instance."

"But petrels are champion fliers!" protested the Polar Bear.

"Aren't dodos extinct?" chipped in the Pika.

"Yeah, what's it to you?" sneered the Petrel, spitting again in defiance of its biology. "Those two-legged assholes with their flashy boats and oil rigs keep messing up my hunting grounds. So I zigged a little here, and zagged a little there, and ... here I am. What's a bird to do?"

"I'll tell you what you can do!" offered the Polar Bear. "You can come with us to Copenhagen and join our band."

"You have two legs, too," the Pika pointed out.

"Band?" scoffed the Petrel, with a withering glance at the Pika. "What band?"

"Ours!" said the Polar Bear brightly. "I can roar and the Pika can squeak. I'm sure you can squawk or screech or something. It'll be great! The famous Copenhagen musicians will help us hone our trade."

So the Petrel, not having anything to lose, joined the motley assemblage. But the band was not yet complete.

At length, our heroes came upon a great body of water.

"Well," mused the Polar Bear. "This is a thing and no mistake. I'm a pretty good swimmer, and the Petrel is a pretty good flier, and the Pika could maybe hang on to my fur, but this here's the Atlantic Ocean. That could be a small problem."

The Polar Bear needn't have worried. As the motley friends contemplated what action to take, a large vessel hove into view. Now, when I say "vessel," I mean a honking great hunk of ice, and right in the middle of it was a penguin.

"Hello!" called the Polar Bear. "What's up with you, my friend?"

"Hello, yourself," cried the Penguin. "You're a carnivore, aren't you?"

"True enough," said the Polar Bear, "and you do look rather tasty, but we need to put these petty differences aside in the face of the common enemy. You'll notice that both of my companions, while eminently edible, remain unharmed."

"Excuse me!" snapped the Petrel.

"What common enemy?" asked the Penguin suspiciously.

"Well, let me put it this way," said the Polar Bear. "What are you doing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on half a glacier?"

"You have a point there," admitted the Penguin. "I was minding my own business, being a good penguin, when ... snap! Off came the ice. And here I am, floating to heaven knows where."

"Let me make a suggestion," offered the Polar Bear. "Why don't you give us a lift and steer for Copenhagen? We're going there to be musicians, since our old means of livelihood seem to have gone down the toilet. You can join our band! I roar, the Pika squeaks, and the Petrel screeches!"

"I can't really do anything musical," sniffed the Penguin. "I don't think I'll fit in."

"Nonsense!" roared the Polar Bear. "You can play the flippers. Every band needs a flipper player! We can call ourselves 'The Four Ps!' The famous Copenhagen musicians are bound to help us now!"

And so the Polar Bear, the Pika, the Petrel, and the Penguin set sail for Copenhagen, and after some days, crashed their iceberg into the European mainland.They were still a day's travel from Copenhagen, however, and the sun was going down. So they decided to seek shelter for the night.

Unfortunately, lodgings were scarce for such as they. After a couple of hours of thrashing around fruitlessly in the dark, the friends were about to give up, when the Petrel, doing one final reconnaissance flap-around, spotted a light in the wood.

"At last!" cried Polar Bear, ever the optimist. "The fates smile upon us!"

"Ok," said the Penguin, "but I suggest caution until we find out what kind of smile that is."

So the Four Ps approached the light stealthily. Before long, they could see that it was a cottage. When they peered in at the window, they could see that the cottage was occupied by several men in loud dispute.

"You always take more than your share!" shouted one, to the head-nodding approbation of the apparent cottage majority.

"But I'm the leader!" countered the object of the nodders anger. "That is, we are the leaders. Leaders have more responsibility, so we get a bigger share."

A couple of the other men lined up with the leader.

"Although your share of the gate does seem a bit excessive," ventured one of the leadership group, setting off another round of shouting and bickering.

"They're robbers!" whispered the Polar Bear. "They're arguing over their cut of the loot!"

"But ... gate?" the Pika whispered back. "Didn't you hear one of them say 'share of the gate?' Isn't that an odd way to refer to stolen goods?"

"Not if you're a really bad musician," said the Penguin.

"Ok, ok, ok!" shouted the robber chief. "We'd better practice a little. Concert tomorrow, you know." And he picked up a baton.

"Omigod!" screeched the Petrel, as sotto voce as he could manage. "They're the Copenhagen musicians!"

Indeed, each of the robbers had seized an instrument of one description or another and proceeded to fill the forest with a cacophonous barrage such as had never been heard since the separation of the continents.

"The amazing thing," commented the Polar Bear, "is that the racket does not seem to have affected their bickering in the slightest!"

"Now, that," said the Penguin, "is certainly a talent of a sort."

Sure enough, the argument of the musician-robbers managed to insinuate itself between the clanging and the screeching and the booming and the squawking. It was discord among the discord.

"If you don't learn to play that thing, nobody's going to want to pay to see us, you know!"

"If I don't learn to play? What about you?"

"I don't need to change anything! You're the one!"

"I say we make music lessons mandatory - for certain people!"

"Oh, yeah? Well, I might be willing to practice a little more, but I'm not taking orders from the likes of you!"

The Polar Bear sagged noticeably. "Anyone got a Plan B?" he asked sadly.

"Plan B, hell!" squeaked the Pika. "If those bozos are the best the world can muster, anything we do can only be an improvement!"