Chin Chin Wasn't Just A Fox

Folklorists the world over (but mainly those who actually use the internet) were startled to discover, in 2011, a wholly new folk-tale which had escaped their attention, if not their notice. "Chin Chin The Fox," researchers revealed, was a hitherto unknown fable character with almost nothing in common with other folkloric foxes, nor those owned by Disney or Warner Brothers or Starbuck's (the coffee chain owns many children's story characters, but has chosen not to share).

Said self-styled "King Of Children" Reginald Hurry, "I recall I was sitting in my room tsk-tsking an article about Aesop when I see on the Porno Channel's news crawl that a collection of stories important to the Hoochie Coochie tribe had been unearthed by nosy Mormon missionaries, who took off with it on their bike. I told my parrot Erich Segal that surely this was a prank!"

Canadian leader-person Stephen Harper, whose house was down the street from the duplex where the manuscript was found, took two long breaths & privatized his old neighborhood. Twenty-three otherwise unassuming Canadians almost lost their methadone privileges. Said one inhabitant, "We've heard the stories around, you know, on the streets, sure, but sometimes we're too busy with our poutine which is, I assure you, as dirty as it sounds."

What are in these stories? Where did they come from? Were there pictures? Folklorists like pictures. Also strippers. To answer this question, several professional tale-gatherers left their favorite titty bar &, still a little drunk, with some glitter in their hair, appeared on the Cable Newsie Network's cross-cultural information spectacular, "Shambles & Lisp."

"Most foxes in folklore are, well, foxy, you know, clever, mischievous" said University Of Littleville Retroactive Professor Of Yesterday Elmer Elvis, "but not Chin Chin. He's hard-drinking. He rides a horse with three wheels. He's straight-talking, he gets the job done. In one story, he completely downsizes the entire Hoochie Coochie pantheon. Also, he steals a lottery ticket from his best friend, a squirrel, & doesn't tell him he won a few bucks. He's kind of a dick."

Adds famous clown Cody Blau, "What I was struck by was the way he chewed tobacco & swore like a priest. They told these oddball parables to their children! By all accounts, the kids who came into contact with Chin Chin's adventures grew up to be self-loathing sociopaths."

But scandal struck quickly, which was irritating, because someone was in the middle of a sentence. What if, suggested private story-collector & Ansel-Adams-lookalike Peabody Headhair, Chin Chin wasn't a fox at all? What if, as Headhair's reading posited, Chin Chin was a laid-off service station attendant from Bangor, Maine?

The uproar in this small academic community was almost audible. The etymologists downstairs actually considered calling the cops. But papers had to be written in order to be peer reviewed in order to be re-submitted with corrections (doesn't anyone use a spell-check?) in order to be queued in order to see the light of day in small, low circulation publications which collect dust on university library shelves.

These determined men & women of letters promptly went to work.