Sour Milk

Let’s find out just how good you are at following directions. In your seventh year you will become a walking stick. Should a bird or other predator grab hold of your leg, simply give up the leg. Being a juvenile, you will regenerate the missing limb the next time you molt.

When you grow up you will have babies without males; you will reproduce making seeds. You must behave like a stick at this time and forgo changing into more intricate shapes. You will wear lichen to make yourself invisible. You will neither speak nor bring attention to yourself in any way. You will not hide your seed/ eggs by sticking them to leaves or bark. You will drop them randomly on the forest floor, leaving your future progeny to their own fate.
You will shed your skin and then eat it immediately; this will protect you from
being eaten by others. If you are threatened, you will spit, spit, spit.
Aim for your enemy’s mouth. Your spit will leave a bad taste. If this does not work,
try bleeding from your joints.

Thank you for listening to me during your short lunch break. I will fasten myself onto the bathroom wall like a toilet plunger and wait for your report. There will be no theological discussions or interpretations of any kind. All fellow patients will be wearing dirty stove pipe hats until we understand more. Above all, do not complain of the sour milk.