Chapter Sixteen

If Loony the fox thought he was going to have it easy in Smiling Forest, he was gravely mistaken. For while some of the animals simply retreated into their shells and cocoons and kept mute over his brutal regime’s numerous outrages, some of them constantly bombarded him with demands that he should respect their rights and fulfill his numerous promises. They poked serious fun at him and called him Kooky the crooked who thought he was straight and Faliba, the donkey who thought he was a saint.

The more brutal Loony became the more stubborn and resilient some of the animals grew. You are a mere public servant! they shouted to Loony at the top of their voices. You are merely a citizen like the rest of us! You have no right to ride roughshod over us! You must fulfill your promises to us! Your promise not to stay in power beyond ten years! Your promise to respect animal rights and the rule of law! Your promise not to be corrupt and live a flamboyant lifestyle! Your promise not to eat all the apples and leave us starving!  You have broken all your promises Loony! You are a serial liar and you should not expect us to sit back, fold our arms and keep quiet! We refuse to be cowed by the repressive and evil activities of your shameless agents! Down with all corrupt powercrats! Down with powercracy! Long live popularcracy! Forward ever, backward never! No retreat, no surrender!

Hearing these protests made Loony very angry. He grew so extremely angry that he roughly plugged a cow horn in each of his two large ears, angrily clenched a piece of dry bone between his teeth, and marched angrily around Smiling Forest, fuming at the nose and mouth, and making guttural noises. Khukh, khukh, he loudly grunted. How dare those puny little things question my authority? How dare they write funny stories about me or purport to tell me what is right in my own personal forest? How dare they challenge me - the preferred choice of the Great God Yallah! I would make all of them pay for their impudence and insolence! I own this forest and I will rule this forest for a billion years and if they don’t like it they can go to hell! Aaaah!!

Being ever the vengeful and vindictive character, Loony set about exacting vengeance on all who spoke out against him with reckless abandon. All foreign journalists who dared ask questions about his regime were unceremoniously picked up by the Mental Surveillance Unit, tortured, locked up and thrown out of Smiling Forest. Those journalists who were citizens of Smiling Forest were subjected to persistent arrests, detentions, torture, and verbal abuse on national Smiling Forest radio and television. He called journalists illegitimate sons of Africa and threatened them with death if they did not stop writing bad things about him, the greatest ruler in all of history since the beginning of time. He ordered media houses to be set on fire by arsonists. He ordered some journalists to be shot by unknown assailants while others simply disappeared into thin air on Loony’s orders. Did they not know that the Great Leader was above criticism, above the law, above everything and everyone in Smiling Forest? But in spite of the brutal repression, the animals of Smiling Forest refused to keep quiet and caused Loony the worst trouble of his life. Some who were forced into exile started writing funny stories about him, giving him funny names, planting tails on his backside and likening him to an elephant on mosquito legs who would one day crumble under his own weight, never to rise again. Others called him Janakh the rat who thought he was an indomitable giant and challenged all the cats to a fight. He was even called Tunguneh, the hen who thought she was a giant and challenged Banko the giraffe to a height-measuring contest. Sometimes, they called him Potopoto, the famous muddy puddle who thought he was a river.

In spite of his naked oppression of innocent animals, Loony still found support among some greedy and selfish elements within the Smiling Forest community. Irresponsible thugs among the Smiling Forest community who had no education and were too lazy to do manual labor flocked en masse to join the newly created “Loony is Always Right Movement” - LARM. LARM thugs were given license to intimidate, harass, beat up, even kill perceived opponents of General Loony, alias Mbotagi. Often, LARM thugs set out in the middle of the night to set fire to the homes and offices of Loony critics. Though they generally operated under cover of darkness, LARM thugs were placed high above whatever shreds of law were still functional in the statute books of Smiling Forest. For Loony and these criminal thugs, there were no limits, no boundaries to how far they would go to maintain the brutal and corrupt powercracy. Loony could just not imagine himself as anything less than the supreme lord and master of Smiling Forest for as long as he was alive! Indeed, hearing him talk about his resolve to stay in power for a billion years, one would have thought it never crossed the arrogant fox’s mind that like all mortal beings, he would one day succumb to the cold hand of death. No! Never! No death for Loony the mighty fox! The Great Leader! The grand lord, master and personal owner of Smiling Forest and all its inhabitants, including the trees, rocks and bushes! All hail the mighty immortal lord Loony with the horse’s mouth!

Their extreme brutality notwithstanding, Loony and his LARM thugs were perpetually frustrated in their attempts to silence the animals of Smiling Forest. The more they attempted to silence them, the higher their resolve to tell Loony the truth and demand that he fulfill his promises to them! After every moment of persecution and repression, the critical animals resumed their campaign with renewed vigor. To Loony's "no limits, no boundaries” the animals responded "no retreat, no surrender". This frustrated Loony so much so that he routinely spent whole nights in his underground shrine weeping and wailing profusely, loudly blowing his mountain nose and beseeching his wooden gods and iron ancestors to strike those stubborn animals dead. For although Loony publicly pretended to be a loyal servant of the Great God Yallah and started every speech with “I am the greatest living believer in the Great God Yallah”, he spent whole nights worshipping wooden idols, animal skulls, dry lizards, snake skins and other strange objects in his dark underground shrine. But of course, he could not fool the Great God Yallah. The persecuted animals found solace in the unshakeable reality that someday someday, they will free themselves from the brutal clutches of the power-sick, paranoid and brutal fox. At some point they knew, Loony would have no choice but to drop into the infamous dustbin of history. The animals saw that he was already halfway in and waited impatiently for the day he would finally fall right into the dustbin of stinking history he was creating for himself. They often repeated the saying that Loony was a big fool with a long rope who would one day hang himself. History stood to prove them right.