I decided to wait until I had this whole tale finished from its harsh beginning to happy ending before posting it. I didn’t want anyone’s last thoughts of this precious baby smurf to have to linger for over a week on the little one’s hardships before I provided the conclusion.
The ordeal
I arrived at the municipal shelter and signed in to enter the area where the animals were being housed. Another S.M.U.R.F. supporter had tipped me off that there was a smurf baby being held here, and that its treatment by the staff was callous at best. The Blue Moon Nursery had room for one more baby smurf and I had been authorized to rescue the little one if possible. Any place with lots of larger animals, especially of cats, made baby smurfs very nervous so my lady friend was caring for Blueberry back at the nursery during this excursion.
I passed cage after cage of dogs, cats, and rabbits until my guide brought me to a dingy little corner where there sat a small wire cage just big enough for a single hamster. I was stunned by the sight before me. There in the confines of that little cage was an unusually small runt of a baby smurf and an ADULT SMURF! I’ve seen a smurfette before when I’d met Tatlerette, but this here was a male of the species. The pitiful little baby smurf had been trying to cover her smooth bare crown with a tuft of mildewed straw from the cage floor. By the forlorn and anxious look in its eyes the sparse covering provided a poor substitute for the feeling of security baby smurfs derived from their special little hats.
Suddenly conscious of my staring, the grown smurf’s cheeks flushed in shame. The poor little creature had been divested of his traditional white pants and hat for “sanitary reasons”. I was about to protest the humiliating way that this sentient being was being treated when a new horror commenced to take place as a brutish staff member appeared with a bucket of soapy water, two clothespins, and an extension hose.
The smurf’s eyes grew wide in fright and picking up the naked baby runt, clutched her tightly and backed into the far corner of their cage.
“You can’t Smurf this to us again!” the tiny blue adult’s voice squeaked in protest as the terrified baby smurf started bawling.
The worker ignored its pleas and opening the cage door, reached out to grab them.
“No! Not the baby! Please!”
The runty blue infant yelped in pain as she was gripped tightly by one of her soft round ears and wrenched from the arms of her protector. The tiny thing was then repeatedly dunked into and swished around the bucket of soapy water, screeching and spluttering each time her little head broke the water’s surface. When the little smurfling was lifted out for the last time it was affixed to an overhead piece of twine by a clothespin clamped onto her tender pea of a tail.
The adult smurf’s was grabbed next, squirming as he was subjected to the same routine, except that a piece of string was used to bind his wrists behind him and that he was hung by his bulbous, fleshy nose.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine how painful it must be for the smurf’s big tender nose to be so tightly clenched by that clothespin. The adult male smurf’s tears flowed freely as he sobbed in abject misery.
The wee little baby smurf’s hysterical squeals tore at my heart. Her soft, sensitive smurf tail was being grotesquely squashed by the clothespin’s grip while her delicate teensy eyes stung from contact with the soapy water.
Finally the man pulled the trigger on the hose’s spray head and aiming it drenched the miserable little blue creatures with ice-cold water. He then took down each of the wet, shivering smurfs and dropped them back into their cage. As the baby’s crying died down to a pathetic whimper I spoke up.
“I need to take this baby smurf to our nursery, she can’t survive the treatment in here!”
I didn’t dare overtly protest further though. I wanted no red tape from these people to impede my rescue effort.
My guide responded “ The baby is going to a pet store tomorrow, they already signed for it.” He seemed to anticipate my next question “I don’t know which shop, except that it’s local”
I left the shelter and immediately began looking up the address and phone numbers of every pet store in the area. I wanted to make sure I found the poor little smurfling before someone bought it. Most people didn’t realize how much care a baby smurf required and after the novelty wore off they were usually dumped at shelters like this one.
I thought about the adult smurf. There wasn’t much I could do for him at the moment but while my guide was distracted I’d dropped a paper clip into the smurf’s cage. It had a simple looking lock on it and perhaps the smurf could open it. Anywhere had to be better that that place…