"And They Lived Happily Ever After!"

I've been thinking a lot lately about endings. Mostly because I tried to end a short story that I've been working on for a few months now, and I stared at the page for a few blank seconds before I gave up.

The truth is, I am no good at ending things.  When I give talks I usually wrap up with a "Yeah, soooo, now you need to stand up and...," or someone will come to my rescue by walking across the front of the room and demand the attention of the audience.  Even in face to face conversations when explaining things I will ramble on until I can find some statement that suffices as a conclusion. Usually, it's rather lame. "And, yeah, that's all I have to say. I'm done."  And I've heard on more than one occasion that I leave a super awkward voicemail.

Bringing a story to its end seems to bewilder my poor little mind. Is this just me? I begin my approach to the last two or three sentences, when suddenly cohesive thoughts escape from me like animals from a zoo and begin beating their little limbs on every surface and peeing and skwaking so that I can no longer tell what they are supposed to be or what they ever did look like, much less am I able to catch them and strap them back into their crates....
I have a great feeling that no on understands what I just wrote.  Let me put it this way: I get to the end and cannot for the life of me think of anything else significant to say more than what just happened in the plot. I feel as if I have conveyed all the necessary information and now can not possibly need to take more of the reader's time.  If I do try to contrive some end phrase or statement, I feel as if it immediately cornifies the entire story making it suitable only for t.p., no matter how riveting the body of the work was. Like if I end it with the "moral of the story" it makes that very moral out to be superficial and fake, and the same goes if I were to divulge the mystery which I crafted from the get go. But I also can't just end the story without coming up with something and let the reader fall of the cliff following after it, nor can I just suggest that all the characters just went back to their Sunday tea without declaring some sort of purposeful statement, or look too far into the future and therefore start a whole other plot line altogether, or....or....or...
You can see where I'm going with this? The escaped animals? The poo flinging?

Most of the time in my school work I would end essays with some "inspirational" statement that basically read, "and that is that!" (cue Reading Rainbow music [Ba dah da!] and over-exaggerated wink.) For some reason my teachers and professors ate that up, or at least seemed to do. Perhaps they were as sly as the Grinch: "And his fib fooled the child. Then he patted her head, he got her a drink, and he sent her to bed. And when Cindy Lou Who was in bed with her cup, he crept to the chimney and stuffed the tree up!" Or in reference to the my sappy ending, gagging into their sink. I hated those endings of mine.

I've digressed... Sometimes the ending just comes all on it's own, but mostly not. I would love to learn to avoid the animal confusion.

Ideas, comments, and hurtful criticisms are welcome if you so choose to leave them in the combox. 

And because I like pictures: (Google search "wild animals loose in ohio.")