By the time Lucas woke up the next morning, his parents had already left for work without so much as a word to him. He didn't care. He was living the easy life with no responsibilities. The bed was gone now, and he didn't have the faintest clue how anyone managed to get it out of the room without waking him up. He was now much to big for the bed anyway. He decided to just relax on the floor for until he felt like moving, and then he would be ready to go outside and eat breakfast.
Just then, Lucas experienced the strange sensation of something long and flexible slapping the floor, and he could hear it happening, too. It was coming from behind him. Heaving himself up into a sitting position, and tried to figure out what it might be. He tried to see if he could make himself feel the slapping feeling again, and it turned out to be easy, but it couldn't have been his arms or legs since he could see those in front of him. Following the direction of the sound, he looked behind him, and he saw a furry rope-like object stretching out behind him. Slapping the floor again, he got to see it flex itself upward and flop back down on the floor. He realized, then, that the thing he was looking at was something he controlled.
Reaching for it, Lucas was very surprised to feel large, clumsy hands trying to wrap themselves around part of his spinal column. This made him all the more curious, and he frantically fumbled his fingers to get hold of it. It was hard, since some of his fingers didn't seem to separate easily, but he managed. Bringing his rope-like companion around to hold it in his lap and look over it, he furrowed his eyebrows and scratched his head with one stiff hand.
"What is this?" he asked himself, confused by the feeling of his spine wrapped around him and his hand pawing at something he'd never felt before, he finally realized that he couldn't escape to the conclusion that it was a tail. The scruffy tassel of black hair at the end even made it look familiar, too.
"But I don't have a tail, do I? Wouldn't that belong on an animal or something?" But then, Lucas realized he had been acting more or less like an animal lately. He already had their freedom to go around naked and go to the bathroom wherever he wanted. Now he had a new body part to use as he wished. Maybe he should stop while he was ahead. Maybe he was being punished by a higher force than his parents. But Lucas kept having trouble making sense of the idea that this would be a punishment at all. Trying not to dwell on his lingering worries too much, Lucas stood himself up on all fours, looked back at the long tail dangling behind him, swished it a few times, and plodded forward to let himself out (with some difficulty) through the front door.
Plowing through more grass with his big, blocky snout, Lucas decided that everything was okay. He could eat his fill, he could see the sights with his surprisingly wide of view, he could hear the sounds around him with those large ears of his, and he could finally do something about those flies without forcing his stiffening hands into action. His tail was so easy to use that he didn't have to lift a finger to slap those itch flies off his rump. Maybe, instead of punishing him, a higher force was rewarding him for his discovery that grass is the perfect food. Maybe he would be the one who would end world hunger after all. For now, though, it was time to sit in the shade, burp up some grass so he could chew it again, and just rest for a while.