Words for Wednesday -- September 14, 2022

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Troubles led her to bow out, but the meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast with Elephant's Child as our coordinator.

  Essentially the aim of this meme is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given some prompts. These prompts can be words, phrases, music or images.
  What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...
  We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.

  Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog. This fun meme includes cheering on the other participants.
  And the more the merrier goes here as well, so if you are posting on your own blog then please tell us in the comments, so that all other participants, can come along and applaud.

The words appear on Elephant's  Child's blog every Wednesday in September. The words come to us from the head of David M. Gascoigne

This week the Words are:
Laboratory
Devoted
Ridiculous
Happy
Tenderly
Sick
      And/or
 Encouragement
Diseases
Formidable
Unruly
Vaccine
Cricket
I have given up on my continuing stories for the time being, but I have not left Susan or the Unicorn Farm. As usual I took up the additional  challenge of using the words in the order they were given.

The smaller laboratory on the second floor was devoted to the transformation of small animals and inanimate objects. On the shelves running all around the walls over the doors and windows stood a ridiculous amount of stuffed animals. Some were old and decrepit, with hairless snouts and torn ears, some looked new and almost alive. Susan was happy to find at least three different owls on the broader shelves in the back of the room.
  Tenderly she took them from the shelf and handed them down to Thora who placed them on a table. Susan climbed down the ladder, and concentrated on the three owls at the table.
  "This one," she said to Thora, "this one looks like the owls on my Grandma's clothesline."
  The stuffed owl looked sick, and Susan needed little encouragement to pump Thora for her knowledge about owls and their diseases. Thora's knowledge in such matters was formidable, and they spent the next couple of hours happily ensconced in discussions about less savoury symptoms of diverse diseases among owls and other flying familiars.

  Jon stood in the door, his unruly hair even more disorderly than usual. For how long he had been standing there neither Thora nor Susan could have told you.  He cleared his throat. Susan and Thora looked up, and Thora asked him what he wanted.
  "If you're quite done discussing Avian pox, I'd like to have a word with you concerning the vaccine for yellow fever," Jon answered.
  "Just a sec," Thora answered, "We've have to put all these stuffed animals back. Taavi wants this room for some experiments of his on crickets and grasshoppers"
Jon left and Susan asked: "Is Taavi really going to experiment on grasshoppers?"
 "That's what he told me," Thora said earnestly, "and I think he meant to involve you in the catching, 'summoning' he called it, of crickets and grasshoppers."
"Thanks for the warning," Susan said warmly. "I better go and study the names for those in Icelandic." Susan ran off and Thora sent a fond smile in her direction.