Wednesday, Feb. 09, 2005 - 6:35 p.m.

Box the miserable toad was sad.

He was at a party, a gathering of a few friends - insects and amphibians and mammals who had all vowed not to eat each other - and Box really couldn't bring himself to communicate with anyone. He attempted small talk with a vole, but the conversation slowly died out, and the vole had scurried away to chat with a chicken who had arrived uninvited.

The food on display was limited, so as to not offend partygoers - it was difficult when one person's food was another person's second cousin - and Box decided to not bother eating. He had heard that another toad had tried to eat a fly, and the wasps had stung him to a twitching death. Box sighed. Perhaps he should leave and find some real food.

Box wasn't sure why he'd been invited, he wasn't much of a party-person, generally he just made people depressed or bored. The party was being held in order of some wedding or other. Mice, Box thought. One of their friends, a young frog, had invited him.

They were underneath a tree, in the hollows around the roots, it was near a pond and was a perfectly good place for such an occasion - it wasn't even polluted. The humans were fast asleep by this point, it was late, little bio-lumiscent insects and moonlight were all the guests could see with. Box was quite short-sighted, and everything was a dark blur tonight.

Eventually, someone threw a rolled up leaf at him, and, holding back tears, he went back to wherever he was going to be sleeping. Excluding one young hedgehog, who cheered, nobody noticed he'd gone.