There lived in a forest a fox and a stork who passed each other virtually every day and they both had that regional quirk where they were invariably civil and polite while secretly despising the other but they were also sensitive and neither wanted to be accused of being practitioners of the 'Seattle Freeze' so one day the stork broke down and invited the fox to dinner.
The stork prepared a wheatgrass and chard consomme with tofu chunks served in a tall, thin vase that he could easily drink from with his long bill while the fox, standing on tiptoes, could barely get his tongue an inch into the rim.
The next day, the fox invited the stork to dinner, which was a Dick's Deluxe burger still in its wrapper on a shallow plate on the floor. The stork could barely even break off a small piece, much less get it from the tip of his bill to his gullet.
For the next few days, they maintained a stony silence during their encounters, but after a week of festering resentments the fox and stork could take it no more and tried to think of something snarky and hurtful they could say under the guise of being 'open and upfront.'
"What was that you tried to poison me with?" said the fox. "Bilge water from a Florida Everglades sewage treatment plant?"
"Meat is murder!" shot back the stork. "And anyone who eats at Dick's has the responsibility for global warming on their shoulders, the shame and guilt of animal cruelty tainting their souls, and the blood of every atrocity and war crime of the last 80 years on their hands, you burger-chomping imperialist son-of-a-bitch."
The funny thing is that the fox and the stork were each the only friend the other had in the world, because none of the other forest creatures could stand them, and their dysfunctional, co-dependent, passive-aggressive relationship was the only thing keeping them from being entirely alone and isolated with nothing to do but stare into the abyss of a meaningless universe.
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