The young lady, flustered and blushing red, came again to attention, 'There is no excuse, Sir, I will tender my resignation immediately.'
    I couldn't help but wonder who she was going to tender her resignation too, maybe Keith? I guess that was the likely suspect. Come to think of it, how did she come in possession of the delivery? Questions I'd likely never be privy too, I puzzled at it all, as she stood waiting for instruction.
    'It's all good soldier,' I began, hoping soldier was the polite way to address her, 'We all fall short sometimes.' 
    My words seemed to please her, and she retrieved the parcel and proceeded to head upstairs. After a handful more of the saluting and, 'All hail the squirrel's.' Number Thirty-Six, and yes, that's the name she gave me, helped me assemble the slingshot, or may I say, catapult.
    My idea was simply to practice until we could reasonably land Phyllo, safely onto the building's rooftop adjacent to ours. The distance, being around two hundred feet, was an achievable goal, in my opinion. Thirty-Six had a most practical idea to weigh Phyllo; then, we could make a dummy squirrel that we could safely launch at the nearby target. Easy peasy, you might think.
    Weighing Phyllo turned out to be more complicated then I would have guessed. One, he wouldn't sit still on the scale, and two, as soon as I put him down, he climbed right back up into my pocket. Thirty-Six came up with a decent plan of attack. We had her stand on the scale, zero it out, then I would hand her Phyllo. I wasn't sure how Phyllo would react to her holding him, but you don't know until you try. 
    We got everything into position, and I picked up Phyllo and reached out to hand him to her. For a soldier girl, her eyes sure lit up when he jumped from me to her. It took him a few minutes to find a suitable spot to perch and settle on her left shoulder. You would have thought that Christmas and Easter had come all at once for her. I wondered if she had had much joy in her life as I took an extra second to take in the picture. I was happy that Phyllo had cooperated so well. I even pretended I was having a hard time getting the measurement so she could enjoy the moment for a while longer. 
    We got all the information we needed and decided that we would use a small paper bag filled with the correct amount of birdseed for weight. So, with the fake squirrel bomb in hand, we headed out to the apparatus. 
    Now you know, the next minutes of my life were so surreal. I wish I had had a recording device so that I might watch what triggered the happenstance. Maybe I could go frame by frame to see what the catalyst was that set it all off.
    I'll explain myself.
    Thirty-Six was in the act of placing our dummy squirrel into the launcher and setting it so said squirrel would land onto the rooftop of the neighbouring building, when, Phyllo, who hadn't been paying any attention up to this point, sat straight up and leapt right at her. Thirty-Six, who was concentrating on the rooftop target, had little to no idea that Phyllo was streaking towards her. 
    Now I know that It seems like an exaggeration when I say he was streaking, but as God is my witness, that's what happened. In fact, up to the time he landed on her face, he resembled a fuzzy grey bullet, flying through the air.
    Honestly, I didn't know what to do. As soon as Phyllo landed, he dug his front claws, one for each eyebrow, and the rear, gripping her nostrils, the slingshot went off. 
    I should warn you, if you're reading this to your children, you might want to skip the next few paragraphs. Maybe say something like, 'Phyllo, just wanted to see if Thirty Six's aim was right,' or something like that. 
    Phyllo, seeing the fraudulent squirrel shoot off, unhitched himself from the frightened women, and took off after it. He must have known that it was impossible to catch the birdseed bullet, but It didn't stop him from trying. He covered the distance of the roof in seconds, impressing me considerably. I never knew how fast squirrels could run before this. Let me just say; when the shit goes down, you had better hope you are in a safe place, these little fuckers got a lot of go in them.
     Phyllo reached the edge of the roof just as the squirrel shaped bag hit the side of the building. It exploded, raining the birdseed we had used to give the fake squirrel weight onto the traffic and people below.
      It was at this point that Phyllo turned and looked at me. In his obvious anger he chittered something that might have been a, 'You bastard,' or maybe a, 'What the fuck Al.' I would like to hope it was something more delicate than that, but I don't think it was. 
    He turned from me and stared for a brief second at the catapult, and then at Thirty-Six, who was still holding her hands over her injured face. It was at this point where things got out of control.
    Phyllo, being the athlete that he was, flew at the catapult. He jumped high to the top of one of its side posts and rebounded off it, gaining even more speed and height. As he continued straight at Thirty-Six, he dangled in the air for one fleeting moment. His eyes and teeth flashed, his claws extended, his beautiful grey tail flowed straight out from behind him. He was power incarnate at that moment, a beautiful, deadly warrior. That poor woman never saw it coming. Phyllo hit the top of her head at full speed, using the bun in her hair to brake himself. In one fluid motion, he aimed downward and got himself under her shirt. 
     I'll describe it like this if you've ever watched that movie where the alien is growing inside the spaceman, moving from here to there until it rips itself free. Well... it was something like that. 
    I could see the outline of Phyllo's little body tearing around under the shirt while Thirty-Six swatted at him with one hand and tried to pull her top off with the other. It was all screaming and squeaking until Phyllo
 came to a sudden stop. It was then that the screaming turned to screeching. 
    She finally tore her shirt open, and I could see Phyllo latched onto her right nipple. He swung back and forth as she screamed, he looked like a squirrel shaped nipple piercing, swishy tail included. The volume of her screaming grew in its intensity. 
    I must admit that I was no help to the poor girl. You see, she had such a nice rack, and it had been a very long time since I'd been in the vicinity of a half dressed woman, that even with the squirrel attached, I was more than a little dumbstruck.
      In her pain and frustration, Thirty-Six became more animated with her gestures, and her screaming turned to yelling. The yelling was what broke through my haze.
     'What the fuck! Get this fucking rodent off me! I didn't sign up for this! Al! Get this fucking tree rat off me!' Now
 I knew she was pissed, but upon hearing the words, 'Tree Rat', all my desire to fix the situation went out the window.
    'Get him off yourself.' I smiled. 
    She hurled a few more choice words at me and commenced to swat at Phyllo once again. It must have hurt like hell because she was doing that panicked dance a child does right before it wets its pants.
     I could see that she was looking around, frantically trying to find something to help dislodge the squirrel. Coupled with the stamping of her feet, you knew something was going to give. 
    Running back into the apartment, Thirty-six blew through my front door and headed down the stairs with me in tow doing my level best to keep up. I watched as she got to the landing in front of Keith's place and paused. Issuing a giant, 'Fuck you, Ass hole,' she tore Phyllo off her breast and threw him at the door then raced away down the steps. I could hear her crying and talking to herself as she struggled with the locked entryway for the building, but I was more concerned with helping poor Phyllo than making sure that the bitch got out. He was struggling to sit up and licking the blood off his fur when I reached him. I bent down to talk.
     'I'm not sure what I did wrong. Was it the catapult? I'll take it down tonight.'
     Still not quite sure what to say, I reached out my hand, and as he slowly climbed up my arm and onto my shoulder, I turned and looked him in the eyes.
     'I'm sorry, Phyllo, I really am.' 
    He chittered back at me, something about going back upstairs, so we headed towards home. 
    'She turned out to be a real bitch.' I quietly mumbled. 'Nice rack, though.'
    Phyllo responded by telling me about the time where he came upon a pigeon doing unspeakable things to a bag of frozen corn. I listened carefully to the tale, but I'm not sure whether to believe it or not. Phyllo did like to tell stories.
    The next days were spent disassembling the catapult, cleaning up the apartment, and searching the internet as to what the number thirty-six indicated.
     It turns out that thirty-six is complicated; different religions hold it significant for various reasons; it has many numerical values also. I wondered if maybe it was her chest size. I'm not sure, but if using Kieth's logic, and I can never claim to be on the same level as he, there might be two reasons that that number knows her so well, so to speak.
                                                                                                                                                                     
The sum of the integers for thirty-six equals six hundred and sixty-six, this being the number of the beast.
Thirty-six, multiplied by any other name, always produces an answer whose individual digits, in decimal form, add up to the multiple of nine, symbolizing the nocturnal. I'll let you wrap your head around that one.
Thirty-six is the number of possible outcomes in the roll (not summed) of two six-sided dice.
    I added the third possibility by chance. 

    All things being under the laws of physics and God will see the universe's impetus and disorder. - Keith: note thirty-six by two.
 
    I 'm well studied in the workings of Keith, and I find it more than coincidental how it all lines up, even up to the very rolls of the dice. 
    'We will see if we are right when we next see the Keith, won't we Phyllo?' I find myself absorbed by the thoughts of numbers and shapes recently.
     'Damn it, Keith, you're rubbing off on me.'
    
    As meticulous as he is, Phyllo could not get all the blood from his war with Thirty Six off his fur. That left me to bath him. He had accidentally fallen into the water once while I was doing the dishes, and he didn't come back out of the sofa for days. The sink or the bath was not going to happen, that left the shower.
    Now the bravest thing I've ever done in my whole life was stripping down and putting a known nipple biter on my head while stepping into a device of inevitable pain. I have to say that we stood quietly for a good long time, Phyllo and I, me standing in nothing but my socks, and him chattering away about nuts and the abundance of trees in the West Indies. It's funny, but I hadn't marked the exact time that we had begun to understand each other, it was a gradual thing, and hoping that he understood what we were about to do was for him, and not me, I turned on the water...
    I want you to think, really think about what I am going to ask you here, even once, in your entire life, have you ever witnessed a healthy soaked to the bone squirrel? Have you? Have you really? Well, I have, and I don't want to fucking talk about it one bit.
    About seventy feet. That was how long the rope I had been making was. Knowing Keith was eventually going to ask if I had deployed it, I resolved to get the jump on him. After asking Phyllo, now that he was talking to me again, we decided on anchoring it to the pigeon coop closest to the edge of the roof. Phyllo stated more than once that it was not long enough, it was the truth, it simply wasn't long enough to go anywhere. Hopefully, when I visited Keith tomorrow, I could get more material to add to the project. 
    We finished up with the rope and went inside and turned on the television. I wanted to watch a documentary on the snakes of Australia, but I was outvoted. Phyllo was a die-hard Rescue Rangers fan, so seeing that he outranked me, that's what we watched. Trying not to sulk, I worked on getting my thoughts together for tomorrow. I had a feeling it was going to be a good day.
    The morning changed all that.
    Maybe it was the weather or me not getting enough sleep, but I sure didn't feel like visiting Keith today. In fact. I would have been happy staying in bed with Phyllo; even he didn't look as if he wanted to go anywhere fast. If only I could have another hour to myself, I'm sure my energy level would pick back up. I closed my eyes to help focus on how I was feeling.
    The sound of the intercom going off startled me awake, whoever it was that was hammering on the button could be described as persistent, to say the least. We rolled ourselves out of bed, then pressed the talk button to answer the bell. 'Yes...' I wasn't in the mood to chat. 
    'Seventy-two?' came a confusing answer, 'I believe you were expecting me?'
    I hate this new trend in language, upspeak, is what they call it. Generally more prevalent in young women than men. All of the girls at the hospital were guilty of conversing this way. It drives me fucking nuts. 
    For those of you that have never heard of this bastardization of the King's speech, I'll explain it to you. When you ask a question, the emphasis should be directed to the end of the phrase. In Up speak, a statement, not unlike the gentlemen at the other end of the intercom just used, is treated the same way. In essence, if you were to say, 'I am going downstairs.', it would come out as 'I going downstairs?'. The mind-boggling part of this is that no one seems to notice, but then teenagers running around with their pants halfway down their asses seem to be okay also. Not that I'm ranting, but where does it stop is what I want to know.
    Sighing, I exclaimed, 'I'm coming downstairs?' I hoped the sarcasm wouldn't be lost on him, but it was.
    'Take your time. It's my pleasure to serve you, sir.'
     At least that sentence came out correctly. I don't know where Kieth finds these people. How do I know it's Keith that's responsible, you ask? Just look at the number. Seventy-two. Where does it all end?
    I made sure to take my time getting downstairs. I had a shower, ate a little breakfast, tried on a few different outfits, and then and only then, did we go down to see who had so rudely awakened us. It wasn't only me that was feeling grumpy, Phyllo hadn't stopped talking about his nuts, and increase of solar flares since we finished our french toast. It's staggering how intelligent he is; he's not only an expert on the local foods; he also can stand his ground with some of the best minds in the world. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you really must come over sometime, you can even pick the subject matter if you wish.
    Getting to the front door, I came face to face with Thirty Six, and not knowing what to expect from Phyllo, I didn't open the glass door.
    'Al!' It seemed that was her only way of a greeting that she was comfortable with, 'I have come to inform you that my services are no longer in need for this part of the operation. I regretfully tender my resignation and am truly sorry for my actions.'
     I can't say that the apology didn't touch me; however, Phyllo had other feelings. Letting out a