Stanza By Me

**Stanza By Me** is an episode from "Little Dogs on the Prairie."

## Synopsis

Hollister was so hard on the general store and too much papers to work. Luckily, Stanza, the snake, has some things to do.

## Plot

Hollister becomes overwhelmed with the constant streams of telegrams building up. So he decides to hire some help. After receiving a telegram from someone named Stanza who is willing to work at his store, he hires him. When he goes to the train station, he finds out his new telegraph operator is a snake. After discovering he can do 25 words a minute, he is shocked and tells him to get to work.

Due to the town's discrimination and fear of snakes, they both agree it would be best if he worked at night. As the days and nights went on, things seemed to go just fine, until one night. The townsfolk all hear a great singing opera voice coming from Hollister's store, and meet up around it in curiosity. Hollister tells them that he hired someone to work at night. He told them that if they wanted to continue listening to the singing, they would have to stay a certain distance away from the store, and they also couldn't try to see who was singing.

Eventually as the nights went on, Scout reached his breaking point, and went up to the store window. When he looked in, he frighteningly told everyone there was a snake in the store, not realizing it was Stanza who was the singer. When Hollister comes over to tell them he's the singer, they don't listen to him, and instead go on a fruitless search spree to find the singer that they thought Stanza scared away. When they get back to the store afterwards, they still refuse to listen to Hollister. After a suggestion from Sport and Patterson, the town decides to boycott his store.

Realizing that they'll all go hungry, Darcy decides they should all stock up before they boycott so they won't go starve. Everybody then rushes into the store and buys everything, even four rotten kumquats. Hollister is thrilled over the whole ordeal since he's now rich. When he goes into the cleaned out telegraph room afterwards, he finds a letter left by Stanza, saying that he left to prevent Hollister from feeling further pain he thought the boycott would cause, and that he couldn't stay where he wasn't wanted.

Heart broken he tells the townsfolk they got their wish and that the snake was gone. They think the singer will come back since the snake is gone, despite Hollister flat out telling them the snake was the one singing. When there is no singing that night, the townsfolk finally realize their errors. They look for Stanza for several weeks to apologize and invite him back, but have no success in doing so. For awhile afterwards, they all listen to the recording Sport made of the singing at night, regretting their mistake.

## Characters

* Gilroy
* Hollister
* Stanza
* Miss Kittey
* Sport
* Darcy
* Scout
* Patterson
* Mexican Dogs

## Locations

* Prairie Town
* Hollister's General Store and Telegraph
* Train Station
* Sport's House
* Scout's House
* Darcy's House
* Patterson's House
* Miss Kittey's House
* Telegraph Technical Training

## Trivia

* Based on the song and film of "Stand By Me."
* The opera/classical music of "*The Barber of Seville (Figaro's Aria)"* and *"Tosca (E Lucevan Le Stelle)"*
* The IRS are (?)
* Snakes are (?)