It’s a bunny you follow this time, a little hippity-hop in the yard. Follow the little hippity-hop up the street and down the road and into the ditch and out of the ditch and across the street -
Bam!
Poor little hippity-hop! Little bloody one! Little smashed one!
Can’t save it.
That’s when the butcher ogre spins his wheel of fortune. All the streets and trees and houses, all the doors and windows and clouds, go whirling by, go flashing by, flippity-flip, changing one to the other to the other, and when the world stops spinning, you’re lost.
The munchkins point and giggle. "Just follow the yellow brick road," they say.
Sooner or later you meet a wizard or a fairy godmother and they take you to the Emerald City. It’s full of flying monkeys who’ve lost their wings, and heartless woodsmen and cowardly tigers.
Cowardly Tigers.
They always serve pork chops in the Emerald City. Porkchops and beans and mashed potatoes. You save the scraps for Bootsie. Good ol’ Bootsie. They’re only scraps. Even the flying monkeys share scraps.
Somebody in the Emerald City always has the magic elixir. You have to hide it from the wizard. All the animals pass it around. It takes you back to the field of poppies and up into the clouds and even the Winkies get a clue. If you drink enough and click your heels together three times, you find your way home, find it just the way you left it, and Bootsie comes running and you give him a treat because he’s so happy to see you and you’re so happy to see him and you promise never, ever, ever to wander off again.
But something always fails you. It’s the Wicked Witch that does it. She’s cast a spell over the whole land. Made it haunted. When the spell takes you, you’ve got no choice but to follow - follow a hippity-hop or an acorn-muncher or a spotted hornhead or a tiny flapper or a mini song machine.
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