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.