Polysyndeton (pol-y-syn’-de-ton): Employing many conjunctions between clauses, often slowing the tempo or rhythm. (Asyndeton is the opposite of polysyndeton: an absence of conjunctions.)
I had a dog, and a cow, and a hamster, and a chicken. All pets: Moe, Moo-Moo, Curly, and Buck. All adopted.
Buck liked to perch on Moe’s back and ride around the living room. Moo-moo hung out in the back yard with her daily bale of hay by her weather-resistant milking machine that I had bought for her at the state fair two years ago. It was an auto-milker that she could back herself into and kick a green button to get it started and kick a red button to shut it down. Of course, I had fresh milk up the wazoo, and illegally donated my surplus to the homeless shelter. Nobody cared, so I rolled in with a couple quarts whenever I could.
Curly the Hamster was another story. He was a retired CIA hamster, part of a contingent of hamster field operatives. Curly had seen action in Afghanistan and was attached to the US Embassy in Russia. In Afghanistan, he acted as a courier, delivering encrypted massages to special operators. In Russia, it was more complicated. When he returned from Afghanistan, he was sent to Walter Reed Hospital to be fitted with a “tactical aural/optical device” designed especially for the Clandestine Field Hamster Corps. The ‘fitted’ hamsters were inserted into the personal lives of their targets, via their children, as beloved pets. To be inserted, the Hamsters were placed in walls, with food and water, via radiator pipe openings. This was done by “contractors” when the families were off to the Black Sea for summer vacations. When they returned, the hamster would start scratching the wall from the inside, mimicking a trapped hamster. The families somehow concluded that the “animal” got into the house while they were away, perhaps through the open window they found when they returned (of course, the contractor had opened the window, just a crack).
With much effort, the hamster would be liberated—all dirty, and apparently dying of thirst—all part of the CIA’s ruse. Curly turned on his equipment by rubbing his ears. Presto—video and audio of a top-level Russian official. The kids named Curly, Kudryavyy (кудрявый), which ironically, means “Curly” in Russian. There were a number of other coincidences which prompted Curly’s handlers to believe he was compromised. Pretty bad, was when Curly’s target/host read the “Gettysburg Address” to Curly, tore it into little pieces, and threw it up in the air like confetti. He said in English, “American militia make new civil war” and laughed. Even worse, not long after that, Curly ended up in a microwave oven. His target/host had the microwave set on high for ten minutes. He was ready to press the button when the kids came into the kitchen. They kids were horrified. The little one, the girl, would not stop screaming and rolling around on the floor. The older boy grabbed a fork, aimed at his father, and swore he would “put holes in his face” if he didn’t free Curly from the microwave. Curly was grudgingly freed.
An electronics surveillance sweep was scheduled by the Russian KGB for the next week. Curly had to get the hell out of there. The kids vowed to each other going to take him to school to show him off the next day. Given how crazy their father was behaving, the decided to sneak Curly out of the house. They hid him in one of their lunch boxes and off they went. This was his chance—Curly could make a run for it when they started showing him to the class and passing him around.
It worked! Curly made a break for it. When he went trough the classroom door he hit his head hard and knocked out the tracking device the CIA had installed. Knowing what to do, he scampered toward the US Embassy—from his training he was intimately familiar with the streets of Moscow and soon saw the US flag flying over the embassy. KGB came out of nowhere—shooting at Curly and screaming obscenities. One of them managed to blow off Curly’s left hind paw. Bleeding, he nearly passed out, but he managed to drag himself through the embassy’s gates. He was medevaced to Germany, and then, to the US.
Curly won a special Presidential Citation and was fitted with a stainless steel fur-covered prosthetic paw. Now, he likes to sit on the bed and watch my wife and me, at all hours of the night, no matter what we’re doing. He just climbs up on the bed, rubs his ears, and sits there staring at us.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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