In which the onion muncher produces a stern test for Malware's ongoing leadership, or if Troy allows, Malware's looming leadership crisis ...

There's the pond looking for a contender for the late afternoon slot, and there's the dog botherer bashing away at the Islamics - when really the lizard Oz should long ago have found a way to isolate and eradicate dog botherer extremism - while the rest of the reptiles embarked on a daylong bout of Comrade Bill bashing.

It wasn't just enough for the fearless crusaders to wait on the by-election results. Nope they had to chip in, no doubt with the aim of swaying the voters to think again …

When the bee hive gets to swarming this way, the pond gets bored. All will be revealed soon enough, and who knows how it will go when it comes down to the wire …

Selecting a contender for the pond's late afternoon slot, to which no one pays attention, became a bit fee faw fum (illustration and much pedantry here) ...

… though perhaps Troy might have been more inspired by this variation ...

Now fi, fee, fau, fan, 
I feele smell of a dangerous man: 
Be he alive, or be he dead, 
Ile grind his bones to make me bread.

One question belatedly occurred to the pond - were the reptiles doing the grinding, or was it the fiendish leftist twitterati?

Never mind, and so it's on with the grinding …though in the classic way of reptile trolling, we've suddenly moved from "crisis" to "stern test" ...

Here's the thing. The pond has no time for Comrade Bill, but all this is mere idle speculation, full of ifs and buts, and idle doubts and saucy fears, of a kind that would put a doubting Thomas to shame …

It's clear enough Troy doesn't have much time for Comrade Bill (and perhaps the tricky 

Achaeans), and who can blame him, but there's a dangerous lack of meat on these speculative bones.

See how the cagey Troy does a Chance the Gardener. There will be dangers and disasters and historic wins, and yet there might be surprises and luck ...

Well la di dah and whoopy doo, every day is a walk on the political tightrope, and things will be as they might be, and no one is sure when they'll be blindsided by a stray iceberg or a koala drunk on gum leaves … just ask John Oliver.

It would be just as easy to lather up a story of how Malware's precarious leadership situation was going to be under the hammer, with the onion muncher ready to pounce, but the reptiles seem to have tired of this game, even as the dear wittering, twittering lad calls for Malware to follow Trump and make an embassy move … because the more killing the better …

What an artful, dedicated shit stirrer he is, so full of it he has a lifetime's supply, and how clever, coming so soon after the foppish Malware said there would be no move...

Peace in the middle east? Not when there's a political killing to be made.

When are the reptiles going to acknowledge the sterling ongoing work of the onion muncher in his bid to stay at the top of the pond's page, and perhaps regain the precioussss and his throne?

So what if he's joining the princess and her consort in a quest for peace ... we all know how that turned out …