See the original at Shouts and Murmurs. Courtesy of the fabulous New Yorker, all rights, of course, reserved. Personally, Dalmatians story is my favorite.
FROGS
“Hey, can I ask you something? Why do human children dissect us?”
“It’s part of their education. They cut open our bodies in school and write reports about their findings.”
“Huh. Well, I guess it could be worse, right? I mean, at least we’re not dying in vain.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, our deaths are furthering the spread of knowledge. It’s a huge sacrifice we’re making, but at least some good comes out of it.”
“Let me show you something.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s a frog-dissection report.”
“Who wrote it?”
“A fourteen-year-old human from New York City. Some kid named Simon.”
(Flipping through it.) “This is it? This is the whole thing?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Geez. It doesn’t look like he put a lot of time into this.”
“Look at the diagram on the last page.”
“Oh, my God . . . it’s so crude. It’s almost as if he wasn’t even looking down at the paper while he was drawing it. Like he was watching TV or something.”
“Read the conclusion.”
“ ‘In conclusion, frogs are a scientific wonder of biology.’ What does that even mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Why are the margins so big?”
“He was trying to make it look as if he had written five pages, even though he had only written four.”
“He couldn’t come up with one more page of observations about our dead bodies?”
“I guess not.”
“This paragraph looks like it was copied straight out of an encyclopedia. I’d be shocked if he retained any of this information.”
“Did you see that he spelled ‘science’ wrong in the heading?”
“Whoa . . . I missed that. That’s incredible.”
“He didn’t even bother to run it through spell-check.”
“Who did he dissect?”
“Harold.”
“Betsy’s husband? Jesus. So this is why Harold was killed. To produce this . . . ‘report.’ ”
(Nods.) “This is why his life was taken from him.”
(Long pause.)
“Well, at least it has a cover sheet.”
“Yeah. The plastic’s a nice touch.”
DALMATIANS
“Hey, look, the truck’s stopping.”
“Did they take us to the park this time?”
“No—it’s a fire. Another horrible fire.”
“What the hell is wrong with these people?”
FREE-RANGE CHICKENS
“Well, it’s another beautiful day in paradise.”
“How’d we get so lucky?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“I think I’ll go walk over there for a while. Then I’ll walk back over here.”
“That sounds like a good time. Maybe I’ll do the same.”
“Hey, someone refilled the grain bucket!”
“Is it the same stuff as yesterday?”
“I hope so.”
“Oh, man, it’s the same stuff, all right.”
“It’s so good.”
“I can’t stop eating it.”
“Hey, you know what would go perfectly with this grain? Water.”
“Dude. Look inside the other bucket.”
“This . . . is the greatest day of my life.”
“Drink up, pal.”
“Cheers!”
(Laughs.)
(Laughs.)
“Hey, look, the farmer’s coming.”
“Huh. Guess it’s my turn to go into the thing.”
“Cool. See you later, buddy.”
“See ya.” ♦
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