Alonzo misses his sister. Ever since her tragic untimely death by glue trap he has been a changed creature. So it is through the rubbery glare of lingering grief that he now looks at his friend Dickie. This is what he sees:

Dickie has the biggest piece of Swiss cheese Alonzo has ever seen. And he is dancing around with the big yellow wedge on his head.

The smile Alonzo offers his friend is more like a grimace. Nevertheless, he feels his senses sharpened by the nearness of a pornographic amount of cheese.

"Hey," Alonzo says to Dickie, poking him in the ribs, "You gonna share that, right?"

Tossing his fuzzy grey head back and laughing, Dickie throws the wedge of cheese joyously up in the air.

Alonzo cries out. Then he catches the cheese.

The soft but firm golden weight captures his mood. Cradling it reverently to his chest, he says, "I feel more alive than I have in weeks...Dickie? Before we eat this, can we cut it up into jewelry and little hats and wear it?"

Dickie agrees. So they gnaw the cheese into doughnuts to decorate their forearms and tails and dance around the living room until they hear a clattering right outside the door.

"What's that?"

"Shhh! It's the Cheese Police!"

"The Cheese Police?"

"Quick! Hide!"

They dash for their hole, but the cheese jewelry gums Dickie into the opening. "Fuck!" he cries. "I'm stuck!"

"I knew it was too good to be true," Alonzo laments out loud as the long shadow of the Cheese Police falls over then envelopes him.

As consciousness pulls out and away like lengthening taffy, Alonzo flashes back on his first puppy-love for a scrappy looker he'd only managed to make goo-goo eyes at. Then fast-forward to his first and only mutually beneficial relationship with an open-minded older gerbil. He remembers how once his sister surprised him by asking whether he had a farting policy. Then there was that little girl who smelled so much like chicken soup. Or had that only been a dream?