By Mike Hood

Three red pandas showed up at my door the other night. They asked if they could come in and have a cup of coffee. They said they had something to discuss with me. I let them in.

Because what else do you do when three cinnamon-colored fuzzballs in tweed jackets and monocles show up with espresso on their breath and the scent of revolution in their fur?

The tallest of the three (a whopping 22 inches) introduced himself as Dashiell. His companions, who were nervously massaging their tiny claws with lavender oil, were named Razzmatazz, and Dr. Sylvia Crumb (a panda with a PhD in Ornithological Ethics and an obsession with Fleetwood Mac).

“We bring news from the Council of Overlooked Mammals,” Dashiell said, eyes darting toward my toaster as if it might be bugged. “There’s a situation. A reckoning. A rebirth. Also, your toaster owes us money.”

I offered them Colombian dark roast and a seat on my hand-me-down futon that smells faintly of regret and microwaveable pot pies. Dr. Crumb accepted her coffee with a splash of oat milk and a wink that made me oddly self-conscious.

“You’ve been chosen,” Razzmatazz whispered, nervously licking the rim of his mug. “You are the Prophesied Intermediary. The one foretold in the Spaghetti Scrolls of Old Chutney.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “Another prophecy. I just vacuumed.”

They explained with a mixture of urgency rooted in interpretive dance that the mammalian underworld was in chaos. The ferrets had overthrown the capybaras in a coup orchestrated by a nihilistic lemur named Steve who believed the universe was a poorly written sitcom.

Worse, the pangolins were on strike. Something about unfair scale-shining quotas and being misrepresented in children’s books.

“You’re the only one,” Dr. Crumb said, removing a small kazoo from her satchel and handing it to me with reverence. “Only you can kazoo the Song of Balancing Snacks. If the ritual fails, all vending machines will dispense nothing but expired protein bars and loose bolts.”

It was then that my neighbor, Mrs. Grapenuts, barged in wearing nothing but a flamingo-print kimono and holding a swordfish by the tail.

“I smelled pandas,” she growled. “And heard talk of snacks.”

“Stand down, Helga,” Dashiell warned. “This doesn’t concern the League of Soggy Seniors.”

Mrs. Grapenuts threw the swordfish like a javelin, spearing my TV and releasing what I can only describe as the ghost of Danny DeVito in a tuxedo made of string cheese.

After that, things got weird.

There was yodeling. A brief polka interlude. I may have married a badger in a ceremony officiated by a gerbil in a pope hat.

In the end, the pandas left as suddenly as they came, riding off in a hot air balloon shaped like Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s head.

All they left me was the kazoo, a lingering smell of marmalade, and a deep, unsettling desire to liberate a zoo.

I haven’t heard from them since. But every time I pass a vending machine, I give it a respectful nod.

You never know when the snacks will rise.