Listening to Tom Smith’s “Alternate Universe Lost and Found” just now, it occurred to me that the idea of a Lost and Found like that ought to be a rich source of short story ideas. (As the song points out, it’s more than just socks that slip away between dimensions.) So always looking for something new to read, I went onto Google and typed in, “alternate universe lost and found”.
At first glance, the first search result seemed a bit surreal. But then again, when compared to the idea of an interdimensional lost and found, this “found” ad seems downright normal…
LOOSE PONY FOUND IN MARSDEN PARK AREA
How do you lose a pony?!
Heh. Some ponies are absolute escape artists. Tinker doesn’t seem to care about my gate but I suspect she’s the one who manages to get thru the barn door about once a year. They can make an absolute mess out of a neatly stacked pile of hay. Almost as bad as a teenage male’s bedroom!
Sounds a bit like Wylie’s take on fences. As far as he’s concerned, fences don’t exist and he just walks right through them. Definitely an alternate universe perspective involved.
But the pony… Perhaps it’s because I haven’t lived far enough out in the country (though I’m most definitely not a city-boy). The idea of walking through a park and unexpectedly coming across a pony just seems a bit surreal to me.
About the only thing I can think of that compares was a spring day during my Junior year of college. I was walking across campus and when I got the lawn of the student union building, I encountered a most strangely garbed group of people, whaling away at each other with swords and shields. (It wasn’t until some years later I first heard of the Society for Creative Anachronisms. I can only assume this was a college chapter of that group.)
When I first moved to Germantown in 1991, I unexpectedly ran across a calf walking down the street at the corner of 355 and 118 (which is now 355 and Boland Farm Road). Next time you’re in the greeting card aisle at Target, remember that there used to be cows grazing right there.
Now that you mention it, the DC area does have a tendency toward unusual activity on the roads. In the time I’ve lived here (since 1996) I’ve encountered reports of a bull (and any number of deer) sprinting up and down I-270, an overturned truckload of live chickens down in the Springfield interchange (requiring traffic to be stopped while the police gathered them) and I’ve personally pulled a (miraculously, uninjured) dog from the middle of the road on the Outer Loop.
Non-livestock related, there’s been a rather infamous semi-trailer full of black powder, a truck spilling beer kegs, and an overturned truck full of cookies that had the traffic reporters talking about helping with the cleanup by heading over with a tanker full of milk.
Of course, jokes about Washington DC and alternate realities are just a little too easy.