Irwin's mother sits alone in her tree house. She puts her cigar out in the “80” written upon her birthday cake with bleeding red icing.
"Foolish boy," she says.
She moves along the rope ladder like a whip snake into the vaulted laundry room. Hanging from her knees she rifles through the fancy pants in the dryer until she retrieves her special "going out" turban. Back in her one-room treehome, she sits before a candle. Her eyes close half-way and she begins to levitate.
"Foolish boy spending my money on this overpriced Bozeman dump," she hisses, hovering a good two feet off the floor. Her astral body peels off and shoots like a bolt over the land to the Berkeley Pit.
"Hello little lovely," she says to the angry wound below. The bright red stinking liquid filling in the massive void stares back at her with words emanating from its burned mouth like: arsenic and sulfuric acid and pH level of 2.5. "Soon, it will be soon."
Her stiff little body hovers along above the road to Uptown, where she meets her friend for lunch.
"He forgot my birthday because he's trying to make another stupid Montana movie," Irwin's mother says to Bob, who is astrally visiting from Jackson Hole.
"The pit is going to breach," Bob says.
"Yes, soon," Irwin's mother says, placing another french fry in her mouth.
"That stretch of track in the mine was especially steep," said a man at the next table. “A panda like that didn't have a chance."
All the dishes in the restaurant began to tinkle and vibrate and tip over edges. The astral travelers shot out of the roof and over to the pit.
"It will melt all the inhabitants of Butte," Bob said.
"We can divert it," Irwin's mother said. "I'll use my turban."
Laser-like rays beamed from the two elders' eyes, lifting a wave of red acid up onto I-90. Ducks and geese flocked from all directions to try to land on the heavy-metal-saturated liquid, but as they watched the Hummers pop and dissolve like effervescent sugar cubes, they turned north to land on the asbestos piles in Shelby instead.
As the last drop of red digestive juices joined the tidal wave heading east on I-90...
