The Ants

It was a small town, small in the way only really tiny things can be small.
And yet, there was a melancholy flavor in the way the ants, with their
brightly tinted bonnets and tattered Broadway musical scores, would parade
up and down the street until the wee wee hours of the morning. Their only
snacks would be the veal cutlets dispersed by old Jack's cropduster fleet.

But even then, things were changing. The low bleating of the Sheep of the
Ages softened to a dull roar, gradually, year by imperfect year, until at
last it was all over. No more would the ants bravely strip naked in
celebration of the harvest. Brutal big-eyed hamsters with meat cleavers
and finely tuned muffin launchers roamed the streets of the small town.
An ant wasn't safe now, not any more.

The town fair was a haven of relative peace; here the hamsters dared not go,
not yet, not until the Great Shaving. Every fall, as the days lengthened,
and the toads swelled to enormous size in anticipation of the seasonal
junkets, a little sunshine would rejuvenate the ants' bleak, pathetic lives.
They would bet merrily on their eel-driven chariot races... raucous laughter
would fill the air at the weevil fartathon... and it would be as it once was,
for a time, until the twilight came, and with it, the soft rustle-rustle-THUMP
of the creeping hamsters, hauling their rickety pianos out to the town square
in ominous fashion.