#Agent Thoth's #Personal Log: Day 714

Hey Everyone! :-)

Agent Thoth discusses more of the trials and tribulations associated with living with hominids. Incidentally, if you've missed Agent Thoth's earlier entries, you can find them here: Thoth's Journal

Department for the Preservation and Confirmation of Intelligent Life (DPCIL)

Agent Thoth's Personal Log

Day Seven-Hundred-Fourteen:

At first, I thought my hominid-servant meant to aid my work by driving away the hostile canid. The moment she exited my domicile, she engaged with the beast, yelling at it to leave and flapping one of her textile panels at it. Unfortunately, the belligerent animal was quite obstinate and refused to depart. Instead, it made its loud, sharp vocalizations at her, which combined with the haranguing of my hominid-servant created such as cacophony as to almost drive me mad. Naturally, with such a raucous chorus in progress, I was unable to concentrate on completing any research.

Eventually, my hominid-servant did succeed in chasing the aggressive canid away. However, she then, regrettably, turned her considerable energy towards reacquiring possession of my person. At first, she attempted to lure me from the tree by tempting me with some of her exotic edibles. But, while the scent of such delicacies is certainly a siren's song to any self-respecting DPCIL Agent, I do know my duty. And gathering information through a careful study of the local environment must come first. So, despite my hominid-servant's clever ploy, I endeavored to persevere with my research.

Of course, my hominid-servant is not easily deterred once she sets her mind to something, and it wasn't long before she abandoned her efforts to entice me from the tree in favor of a more direct approach. At first, she attempted to scale the trunk of the tree with her bare hands. However, in spite of the arboreal origins of the ancestors of hominids, the current, local representatives of the species are not well suited for unaided vertical ascents. Thus, it was not long before my hominid-servant's efforts succumbed to gravity, and her descent from the tree occurred much more rapidly than she had managed her pain-staking climb.

Despite her undignified, and likely rather painful, fall, my hominid-servant remained undeterred. Since her initial attempt at ascending the tree failed, my hominid-servant did what most hominids are prone to do: she acquired a tool that would compensate for her physical deficiencies and assist her in achieving her goal. In this case, she retrieved a ladder from within my domicile and used it to climb up to the branches where I was attempting to record some useful data. I strove to evade her grasp by retreating to a higher branch, though doing so meant abandoning any progress I had made in my work. But my hominid-servant inflicted the outrage on me of grabbing my tail and using it to pull me closer to her as I turned to flee.

I was so shocked by her outrageous affront against my person that I failed to react in time, and before I knew it she had acquired a grip on the loose skin at the base of my skull and used it to lever my body out of the branches and into her arms. She maintained her grasp on that skin as she descended back down the ladder and, as you well know, there is no effective defense for us against such a tactic. What's more, I'm certain my hominid-servant knows it as well, as she took full advantage of this weakness in her campaign to return me to my domicile.

To add insult to injury, she then spent an extended amount of time lecturing me about "running away" and "making her worry." I despair of ever succeeding in impressing on my hominid-servant the vital nature of my work and how her persistent, if well meant, efforts to confine me to my domicile make it all but impossible to complete. In order to recover from the abuses and affronts I had suffered, I found it necessary to retreat from my hominid-servant's presence, lest my temper get the best of me and cause me to react in a way that we both would have regretted. I am currently beneath her sleeping platform because it is one of the few places she has trouble accessing me, and I am so thoroughly disgusted with all the wasted effort that I may remain here for quite some time. Or, at least, until my hominid-servant offers me a tasty incentive to emerge.

Hominids can be so unreasonable! ;-) You may have noticed that Agent Thoth has a new look. I hope you like his new picture as much as I do, but I'd love to hear your thoughts, either way. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments. ;-) Happy reading, everyone!