Frustrated Dragon Slayer Battles…Locusts

Let’s say your empire stretches as far as the eye can see. It’s been a struggle through the years to protect it from attack, and your drawbridge opens onto an elaborate display of your stuffed dragon collection. You’ve slain them all with the sword at your waist, trusty blade of steel. You wear a few scars, but overall find yourself in vibrant health.

As you look out of your highest tower, a dark cloud can be spied in the farthest field to the East. It’s not rain, not smoke, but a cloud of locusts. They’re devouring your barley crop. There goes the ale for next year! You send out the knights to address the issue, but decide to ride with them to deal with the invasion.

After Googling insect infestation solutions, you set out, a little wary and without much experience but full of confidence. What’s a few locusts?  I’ve battled dragons and won every time! Near the field, the loud munching and flying noises unsettle you. It’s a plague of Biblical proportions, darn.

They’ve leveled the barley and are headed for the wheat. Swishing swords at them, your knights prove their incompetence. You search the skies for birds, but no luck.

According to Google, the only other predator of any merit is, of all things, the dragon. Oh, well, none in sight. No wonder, you think, touching your trusty sword.

Over the next few days, you order tents to protect the crops, but the locusts chew right through them. The villagers are out of food by Tuesday. Your castle is locked up tight by Wednesday, but those pests are infiltrating every crevice. You’re picking one out of your beer when you get an idea.

Time for a bit of entertainment! Calling together your merry players, you shove one of the stuffed dragons into the courtyard and order them to scream and run around. The knights appear and as the dead dragon begins to advance upon them, they slay him good. 

You peek out from behind the black cloth disguising your place on the catapult, where the dragon’s strings are suspended from your arms, articulating his motions. The locusts are watching, no longer munching. After a moment, they begin to form a cloud of assembly.

Flying with all their might toward the stuffed dragon, they surge. What’s up with that? You dangle the black cloth down from the catapult between the locusts and the dragon on the end of your sword and swish! They fall to the ground. The merry players stomp them beneath the cloth with a mighty, gruesome crunching.

A whoop goes up from the people, your people. No way, you think, but that crazy plan of yours actually worked! Not quite like you expected, but you did something, you worked together with the artists and improvised the destruction of the plague.

That night, as the calm and quiet meets the cloudless sky, you spy from your castle tower the silhouettes of twenty stuffed dragons guarding your empire. After a moment of reflection, you still cannot think of the moral of the story. But you thank Google, toast with the last of the ale, and survey the stragglers of the grand, impromptu celebration below.

They ate the bread and cheese, drank the ale and felt secure in the kingdom of such a clever leader. Sometimes it’s good to have a villain to remind everyone what it’s like to have their lives threatened. But only if you can kill it, of course.

Your family, like the knights, are snuggled onto their mattresses in their respective halls as you tack the black cloth to the windowsill and unfurl it down the length of the tower as a banner. The locust guts smashed into the cloth have dried into a pattern, and in the moonlight it resembles the shape of a dragon.