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Meet Chocolate Rat, cool, calm, irascible ... Cough Drops
"Neat," said Tilly Squirrel when he'd heard about Chocolate's new job reading radio commercials for the cough drop company. The executives for the cough drop company were more excited. Much more excited. "Did you hear him?" they said to each other while pounding each other on the back. "He's a natural. He'll double our sales. Triple them. We'll have to go into overtime production. Man oh man oh man. What a boon! What a bonanza!" "They said I was a banana," Chocolate said to Tilly. Chocolate had a great voice, but his hearing wasn't quite perfect, and besides, he was coming down with a little cold. It pays to wear more than a straw hat when skiing down the slopes of chilly Lookout Mountain, which was what Chocolate had been doing last week while on vacation with his best friends Tilly Squirrel and Skinny McKinney. Despite the cold, Chocolate could still deliver. He read his scripts flawlessly. "Man oh man oh man," said the cough drop company executives. "What a bonanza! What a boon!" "They said I was a baboon," Chocolate said to Tilly. "Ha! It was they who were hopping about like baboons and shrieking like gibbons." "I wouldn't worry about it," Tilly said, comforting his pal, "as long as the money's good. What do they know?" "Right," Chocolate agreed. "And the formula for their cough drops—it's silly. There's not even any chocolate in it." Maybe there was no chocolate in the cough drops, but there was plenty of Chocolate in the commercials, and all the polls said audiences everywhere, men, women and children, old, young and in between, loved them. They stopped watching TV. They stopped playing ping-pong. They stopped everything to listen to Chocolate Rat's voice. The cough drop executives were ecstatic. "They're eating him up," said one vice-president of marketing. "Why, I bet some people are going to try to catch a cough just so they can buy our product." "Ha!" said the president of production, "they're going to buy cough drops even though they don't have a hint of a cough." But it didn't turn out that way. Cough drop sales were down. Way way down. "Give it time," the executives said to each other. They gave it time. A week. Two weeks. But sales continued to decline. Another month and the bottom had dropped out of the cough drop market. "What happened?" the executives asked each other, bewilderment dripping from their bodies. Studies were done. Conclusions were drawn. A meeting was called. "We're sorry," the executives said to Chocolate, "but we're going to have to let you go." "Why?" Chocolate Rat wanted to know. "It's your voice. It's too good." "Too good? How can my voice be too good?" "We don't know," the executives said, "but it is. When people listen to it, their coughs go away." Chocolate Rat was off the air. Get stories of Chocolate Rat, Tilly Squirrel, Geneva Owl, and all their pals by email. Subscribe now! It's free. |
Chocolate Rat got a job selling
cough drops on the radio. Now there are three things that soon become
apparent to anyone who knows Chocolate Rat. First, he loves chocolate. He is
the King Kong on the top of the Empire State Building lover of chocolate. And
if he were in fact King Kong, it would be King Kong wearing a straw hat, for
that is the second thing about Chocolate Rat: he always wears a straw hat.
Some say he even wears his straw hat to bed. Some say he even wears his straw
hat when scuba diving. Some say he even wears his straw hat while getting a
haircut. They're not far wrong. The third thing about Chocolate Rat is his
voice. It's a deep voice. A mellow voice. A golden, silvery, lava like voice.
In short, a radio voice. But not just deep, not just smooth—there's a tiny
hint of a rough little rasp to it, and it's that rough little rasp that makes
all the difference. It's the rasp that tickles and beguiles after the
smoothness and deepness has calmed and soothed. Chocolate Rat could croon. Subscribe - Sample Stories - Current Newsletter - FAQ - Store - Home -Contact