Dear Otus,
We've spent a small fortune this spring on roach traps trying to rid our house of the vermin. Talk about a better mouse trap, why has nobody invented a better roach trap?
Disclaimer: Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of 👉 humorous fabrication 👈 appears every Saturday.
-- Gregor Samsa,
Weiner
Dear Gregor,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and to thank you for the opportunity to admonish you and your fellow humans for the unacceptable hubris of speciesism.
What if you awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, opened your newspaper and found at the top of Page 2A a long article about a scientist in Tokyo who had just won a $15 million research grant to perform experiments on adorable and helpless chipmunks?
This fellow begins by grabbing these defenseless creatures by the silky scruffs of their little necks and stuffing them head-first into a bottle of ether to make them fall asleep.
Then, while each chipmunk is snoozing with its furry paws innocently asplay, this heartless scientist flops the little fellow over onto its belly, grabs it up by the hind legs and proceeds to whack off its pointy ears, sensitive nose and even its little flag of a tail.
There's more.
While the little critter is still asleep, the scientist cuts open the furry fellow's striped back and Superglues a tiny microprocessor astraddle the spinal column, hooking up dangling electrodes to various crucial motor-controlling nerve fibers.
And later, when each hapless creature awakes, the scientist amuses himself and his colleagues by aiming a TV remote control at that thing embedded in the shuddering chipmunk's back and calmly takes notes while invisible infrared impulses electronically force the creature to leap into the air, hop sideways, run backward and scramble in place on all fours like a cartoon cat trying to corner too quickly.
Suppose all this was gleefully reported in your newspaper as a scientific "breakthrough." What would you humans think about that?
Would you write your congressman? Would you screed on Facebook? Whatever your response, I'm sure it would be swift and loud, because Americans are a literate, right-thinking society of strong-minded animal-loving individuals who do not sit idly by when they see such injustice.
Americans would not tolerate the surgical mutilation of chubby-cheeked chipmunks. I know that in my heart, which only makes your stubborn, unfeeling silence now all the more shocking.
Last Sunday on Page 2A of this very newspaper there was a story describing the events I have outlined above. Nobody cared because the victims of this Frankensteinian scheme were not cuddly chipmunks but members of a proud, ancient species with more claim to this planet than you, me or any other Johnny-come-latelys.
This ancient species dates to the Carboniferous period some 320 million years ago and is capable of Herculean feats of strength and cunning. Adapted for survival in all climates and under conditions such as radiation bombardment that would explode a rabbit, members of this species go about the business of their daily lives, most of which, I should add, involves the removal of food wastes people have left carelessly strewn about their living quarters.
One of these resourceful critters can survive for weeks on the nutrients contained in the glue on a postage stamp.
My blood ran cold when I read that the target of this cruel Japanese torture was Perplaneta americana -- the American cockroach. Why? Because "it is bigger and hardier than most other species." And yet you red-blooded Americans do nothing while mad scientists in Tokyo yank off American cockroach wings and strap robot-control backpacks onto American roach backsides.
Humans and their ugly double standards should be totally ashamed.
By the way, just so you know, the Atlas of Everything, the universal book of maps that charts every solar system in existence, labels Earth "Pianetta di Scarafaggio" -- Planet of the Roach. Chew on that, nature lovers.
Until next time, when we will discuss your multimedia genocide campaign against bacteria, Kalaka reminds you to watch where you step.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of humorous fabrication
appears every Saturday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
HomeStyle on 05/27/2017