Ear funnels

As the sun set and the moon became visible in the starry sky, the queen and the empress took turns spying. Wilma read her diary for a while, disappeared, and came up with another identical book that was again marked “Wilma’s diary”. It was probably around midnight that Josephine fell asleep and the empress decided to sneak up a bit closer to see what if she could read what the witch was reading about.

Catherine crawled on her belly, slowly from out of the bushes to the side entrance that led to the basement. From there, she couldn’t see but she could her Wilma mumbling to herself. Most of the sounds she caught were grumbles and a few were whistles or moans but using her special spy funnel held up to her ear, every once in a while she recognized a word or phrase.

“Pied cow,” Wilma said clearly.

The empress, not understanding it at all, wrote the phrase down in her spy notebook and slipped it into the secret pocket of her spy jacket. She strained for another hour by the basement door but only heard grunts and the occasional page turn. She walked back over to the ant queen and waking her, shared the news.

Ear funnels in hand, the two spies crept back over to the house, determined to glean more about what Wilma was so furiously researching. They heard bumps, moans, and grunts. They whispered.

“She seems really frustrated about her reading.”

“I get that way too when I reread my diary. I just remember how silly I was when I was younger.”

“I don’t think that’s it. She sounds like she’s really struggling.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that she really is.”

“No, I mean physically fighting.”

“It can feel like a real battle.”

There was a loud thump and both spies realized immediately it wasn’t coming from the window above their heads but from the door right next to them.

“That’s coming from the basement,” Josephine guessed quietly.

There was a muffled cry.

“Definitely the basement,” Catherine declared.

Wilma’s head poked out of the window and glared down at them. “What is this? What are you-“

The two spies shrieked, abandoned their funnels and bolted to then through the bushes.