Once upon a time in Gooseburry Manatoba, a young bouncing baby boy was born and his parents said, "Oh! How cute he is, let us name him the name of Fredania which we are certain will give him much grief from his friends and/or enemies!" So they did. And Fredania bounced, as bouncing baby boys so often do, and being so young there was not much else he could do.
Well, Fredania's parents spoiled him rotten and bought him all kinds of neat little plastic baby gizmos that kids grow out of by the time they're 6 months old and by that time all they're good for is stepping on and hurting your feet anyway. But Fredania did love his gifts at the time and chewed and slobbered on them with all the joy in his newborn heart (besides which, he wasn't aware of his name yet).
When he was 1 year old his folks told their doctor that their baby was growing nicely because they were at their 1 year check up, dontcha know. And the doctor said, "That is very good. What does the child like?" And Fredania's parents said, "Well, he is very fond of fake plants. For example, we have this fake cactus that looks rather real and the wife didn't even know it was fake until three years into our marriage, but that is another story. Fredania will gawk at it and babble baby gobbledy gook until we tell him it's bed time." "I see." Said the doctor. "And does he talk at all?" "Why, yes, he does have one word he likes to say," they said. "And what is that?" "Eucalyptus. That's about all he can say. We are working on 'mama' and 'dada', but they may just be to hard, and besides, it impresses all of our easily amused co-workers to hear a child of such a young age say 'eucalyptus'." "I see," said the doctor, even though he was a bit worried about the development of the boy, but none the less, it IS rather impressive when a baby says "eucalyptus" now, isn't it?
Well anyway, Fredania was in his home one day babbling at a cheap 2$ potted flower (it was a plastic daisy, as I have been told) when tragedy struck. (Cue the cheesy tragic violin music.) Fredania's home was flooded and the raging waters swept him far away from his loving parents. Fredania floated down a river to Northern Macedonia where he promptly fell down one of those sewer holes that always have a big metal circles over them so that innocent babies don't go floating down them during floods but apparently no one was thinking of that at that time and Fredania fell down it and was floundering around like a june bug in a wading pool in Texas screaming "EUCALYPTUS!!" at the top of his lungs (You remember this is the only word he knows).
Well, poor little Fredania got a terrible case of the hiccups down in that hole and was unfortunately not discovered until two weeks later hiccuping away. How he survived still baffles modern science. Well, one day two weeks later his traumatic fall, the kingie and queenie of Northern Macedonia found him in his little sewer hole and yelled, "Hey, little baby, how did you get down there?" and Fredania screamed, "EUCALYPTUS!!" which pretty much explained everything, not to mention the kingie and queenie found it terribly cute. So they adopted him and took him home to their castle in the sky. (Well, it wasn't really in the sky, but doesn't that make it sound so much more…like paradise?) And THAT is where our little Fredania discovered the one thing that could make him happy in the whole wide world…
