Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur

by Mordecai Richler

  Every morning after breakfast Dippy would bend his forelegs at the elbows and lay his enormous head on the grass so that Jacob could slither up his neck and make himself comfy on his back. Then off the two of them would go for a gallop. This was great fun as far as Jacob Two-Two and Dippy were concerned, but it was more than somewhat upsetting to the other people on the lake. One morning, for instance, a farmer out plowing his fields saw them galloping toward him. He leaped off his tractor and ran two miles to the village church, where he promptly fell onto his knees, praying. Late one evening as Mr. and Mrs. Sloshed were driving home from a cocktail party they saw – or thought they saw – Jacob Two-Two and Dippy bounding across a field. Mr. Sloshed promptly slammed on the brakes and turned to his wife, trembling. “Did you just see what I saw?” he asked.

  “Certainly not,” she lied, “because I’m not an old drunkard like you.”

  Right there and then Mr. Sloshed swore to give up drinking for life.

  There were other incidents. People began to complain. And soon enough Jacob Two-Two’s father invited him into the library for a man-to-man talk. “Jacob Two-Two, I realize that I’m the one who brought Dippy over from Africa in a cigar box in the first place. But at the time I honestly thought he was fully grown.”

  Dippy was now as fat as an elephant and as high as a giraffe.

  “Now the phone never stops ringing. Everybody is complaining about our – our monster.”

  “Dippy is not a monster.”

  “Speaking for myself, I now have to spend two hours a day out in my station wagon collecting rubbish just to keep Dippy’s stomach from rumbling, and he’s still growing. What if we donated him to the local zoo and I got you a pony instead?”

  “I don’t want a pony. I’ve got Dippy and I love him.”

  Jacob Two-Two’s parents sat up late that night talking about their problem. They decided to register Jacob Two-Two for daily swimming lessons at the Certified Snobs’ Golf and Country Club, whose members all agreed among themselves that they were the finest people on the lake. In fact, if Snobbers, as they were known, ever argued about anything, it was only about which one of them had inherited the most money or whose family had discovered the lake first.

  Jacob Two-Two’s parents felt that if Jacob was separated from Dippy every morning they might grow apart, and later it would be easier to separate them once and for all. What they hadn’t counted on was that Dippy, left to mope by himself in the woods for two mornings, would follow Jacob Two-Two to the Certified Snobs’ Club on the third morning. This happened to be a very special day for the Snobbers. Their club president, the celebrated Professor Wacko Kilowatt, was to be honored at a luncheon. But even as he was taking his place at the head table, all the people at the other tables began to scatter, the women screaming, the men jumping into the lake. All because Dippy had just come trotting past, heading for the swimming pool.

  It was a disgrace. A scandal. And that night an outraged Professor Wacko Kilowatt summoned Jacob Two-Two’s father to the club and presented him with a petition signed by all the Snobbers.

  “Look here,” Wacko said, “we are now, in spite of what hopelessly inferior people say, a very tolerant club. We have come to accept a few members who are black or Italian or Jewish or Greek, so long as they are also filthy rich. We even accept children for swimming classes whose parents,” he added, looking hard at Jacob Two-Two’s father, “were not intelligent enough to inherit money and actually work for a living. But we must draw the line somewhere. We will simply not accept any green monsters in our club. That beast must not trample our grass anymore.”

  “I will see to that,” Jacob Two-Two’s father promised.

  “Of course you will. But, unfortunately, everybody on the lake is frightened. There are rumors that that ugly monster is an invader from another planet. As you know, I am the most distinguished scientist in the country. That creature has not only aroused my anger, but also my curiosity. Tomorrow morning I intend to visit your modest cottage with my staff of experts to establish exactly who and what that slimy thing is. I will establish this scientifically, of course.”

  CHAPTER 5

  rofessor Wacko Kilowatt happened to be the very brightest light in Prime Minister Perry Pleaser’s think tank.

  Let me explain.

  A think tank is not quite the same as either a tropical fish tank or an army tank. A think tank is made up of a group of people who are paid to think hard and deep. Every president or prime minister has one. Even the prime minister of Canada.

  The prime minister of Canada was the Right Honorable Perry Pleaser. On awakening each morning, Perry Pleaser, even before he brushed his teeth, would hug himself and kiss his reflection in the mirror. He wanted all the people to love him at least as much as he loved himself, which was proving very, very difficult.

  Like presidents and prime ministers everywhere, Perry Pleaser seldom went anywhere without his yes people. He had three yes men and three yes women.

  Yes people are highly recommended. Everybody deserves two, never mind six. It is the duty of yes people to say yes to everything you suggest, no matter how foolish. So when Perry Pleaser arrived at his office each morning and broke into his famous smile and sang out, “Don’t you think I’m absolutely, totally, one hundred percent wonderful?”

  Yes, would say the yes men, and the yes women would call out yes, too.

  Professor Wacko Kilowatt had not been put in charge of Perry Pleaser’s think tank because of his beautiful baby-blue eyes. He was, in fact, short and fat and ugly. He had been thrust into his high office because of a famous scientific survey he had run to establish important facts about Canada’s climate.

  “I wonder,” Perry Pleaser had said one morning, “what kind of climate we can expect next year.”

  Yes, said the yes men, and yes, said the yes women.

  “Good. Then get me the celebrated Professor Wacko Kilowatt out of Playpen University in Montreal. Give him fifty million dollars – no, make it a hundred – and tell him not to come back until he has the hard facts.”

  Yes, said the yes women, getting in first for once, and then yes, said the yes men.

  Then the prime minister said, “Now watch this,” and he went on to tie his shoelaces without help from anybody.

  “Wow!”

  “Did you see that?”

  The yes women applauded and the yes men whistled and stamped their feet.

  Professor Wacko Kilowatt immediately put two hundred scientists to work. They sent satellites into outer space and shoved deep probes into the ground. They traveled from coast to coast, studying animal and plant behavior. They took cloud and soil samples. Then, after they had collected ten tons of data, they fed it into a computer large enough to fill a hockey arena. Two months later Professor Wacko Kilowatt burst into Perry Pleaser’s office. “I’ve got it,” he said.

  “Shoot,” Perry Pleaser said.

  “On balance, to the best of my knowledge, with all the information available to us at this point in time, taking one consideration with another, allowing for computer error, human folly, miracles, and unforeseen difficulties … it seems likely that next year it will be colder in January than July.”

  “This man is a genius,” Perry Pleaser said.

  Yes, said the yes men, and yes, said the yes women, too. “Professor Wacko Kilowatt, I hereby appoint you head of my think tank. You will also serve as my scientific troubleshooter.”

  CHAPTER 6

  rofessor Wacko Kilowatt arrived at the cottage on the lake accompanied by three official paleontologists. They came in a truck packed with equipment to measure and test and x-ray and otherwise annoy Dippy.

  Paleontology comes from three Greek words and means “the science of ancient being,” and paleontologists are men and women who study the history of past life by fooling around with fossils, usually the petrified bones of animals who died millions and millions of years ago.

  “Okay,” Wacko said at once, “where is the thing?”


  “He is not a thing,” Jacob Two-Two said angrily. “He is my pet and his name is Dippy.”

  “Ha,” Wacko said. “Lead us to it. Or him,” he added, winking at the paleontologists.

  Dippy happened to be taking a snooze in the sun, his green humped back heaving like a mountain with each breath and his snores resounding like thunder.

  “Does he bite?” Wacko asked, retreating a step. “Scared?” Jacob Two-Two asked.

  “Certainly not, you little runt.” Then Wacko turned to the three trembling paleontologists. “Go ahead, men. Get on with it. I’ll just climb that tree and watch from there.”

  So they got out their equipment and extension ladders and began to crawl all over Dippy. Dippy, stirring awake, yawned. The paleontologists leaped off him and ran for their lives.

  “Come back at once, you cowards,” Wacko called out from his perch in the tree.

  Grudgingly the paleontologists crept back toward Dippy. They measured his jaw. They peeked in his ears. They took his blood pressure. They listened to his heart. “If I didn’t know any better,” the first paleontologist said, “I’d say he was a dinosaur.”

  “He certainly looks like one,” the second paleontologist said.

  “And measures like one,” the third said.

  Wacko slid down the tree. He pulled his hair. He stamped his feet. “But he can’t be a dinosaur, you idiots. There hasn’t been one alive on earth for sixty-five million years, give or take a year or two.”

  Wacko and the three paleontologists conferred. They consulted books. They studied charts. They appealed to their computers. Finally, Wacko was ready to pronounce. “We have,” he said, “in accordance with the facts and our unrivaled scientific knowledge, come to a conclusion that cannot be disputed. Dippy is either a hoax or a figment of Jacob Two-Two’s imagination.”

  “What do you mean, a hoax?” Jacob Two-Two’s father demanded.

  “Well,” Wacko said, “how do we know he’s not a giant elephant wearing a Halloween costume?”

  “What’s a figment of the imagination?” Jacob Two-Two asked.

  “I mean, and I’m speaking scientifically, you little squirt, that you made him up in your head and he doesn’t really exist. ”

  “But here he is,” Jacob Two-Two said. “Here he is.”

  “Here he is, only if you are eight years old, maybe not doing so hot in the second grade, and have not had the advantage of my celebrated intelligence.”

  “Dippy is a dinosaur,” Jacob Two-Two said, “a genuine Diplodocus.”

  “Which only goes to prove that you’re just a bit dippy yourself, kiddo.”

  Suddenly Dippy raised his huge neck and began to roar. Teeth now as large as bananas flashed in the sun. He opened his mouth wider and sent out his long wet pink tongue. Wacko and his helpers stumbled over each other, reeling backward.

  “It’s plain to see,” Wacko hollered, “that this freak of nature, this beast ugly beyond compare, is a menace. We’ll have to make arrangements to remove him from here.”

  “But how can you remove a figment of my imagination?” Jacob Two-Two demanded.

  Ignoring Jacob Two-Two, Wacko turned to his helpers. “I have decided that he isn’t a figment after all, but a hoax. A fraud. A vile attempt to trick honest scientists. I will advise the prime minister that he is to be exterminated. We will return with airplanes and use Dippy for target practice. Why, we’ll bomb the beast into oblivion.”

  “Oh, no you won’t,” Jacob Two-Two said. “Oh, no you won’t.”

  CHAPTER 7

  fter breakfast Dippy seemed depressed, very depressed, so he and Jacob Two-Two didn’t set off on their usual gallop. Instead they sat down together in a clearing, Dippy lowering his head to the grass so that it was just at Jacob Two-Two’s height.

  “The professor’s nutty as a fruitcake,” Dippy said. “I am so a dinosaur. Not a hoax. Not a figment of your imagination. But a Diplodocus, just like you said.”

  “Dippy, you can talk! You can talk!”

  “Of course I can talk, but you mustn’t reveal that to anybody else. Or next thing I know they’ll expect me to go to school or get a job.” Dippy shed a huge tear.

  “Today is my birthday.”

  “Many happy returns. How old are you, Dippy?”

  “Sixty-five million two hundred thousand and two hundred and twenty-two years old. I can talk and I can read, but I can’t write.”

  “Oh, my, aren’t you ashamed? I mean, at your age?”

  “Please, don’t you start criticizing me,” Dippy said, shedding another tear. “You’re the only friend I’ve got in the whole wide world.”

  Jacob Two-Two hugged Dippy and kissed him on the cheek.

  “How could I be expected to hold a pen or a pencil in these ridiculous hands?” Dippy said, raising an enormous claw.

  “I see what you mean.”

  “No, you don’t. The truth is, I’m an airhead. A real bubble-brain.”

  “Me too,” Jacob Two-Two sang out. “Me too.”

  “That’s why my species has been extinct for sixty-five million years, so far as I know.”

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Dippy.”

  “No, it won’t. I wish I were still frozen in that block of ice.”

  Dippy explained that he had been a mere babe when that slight earthquake in Kenya had dislodged him from his sixty five-million-year-old prison, shooting him up from far below the surface of the earth, through the steam jet, right onto the chest of Jacob Two-Two’s father.

  “My good luck,” Jacob Two-Two said.

  “But possibly not mine. This is the wrong age for me, Jacob. The way I see it, the future is in computers and I can’t even hold a pencil. Professor Kilowatt is right. I’m a freak of nature. Ugly beyond compare.”

  “No, you’re not, Dippy. No, you’re not. In fact, I think you’re handsome.”

  “Do you think they’re going to use me for target practice, Jacob?”

  “Not so long as I’m here they won’t.”

  “I’m willing to put my shoulder to the wheel, but who would hire me? In order to even apply for a job as a messenger boy I could no longer gallop about stark naked. I’d have to buy a suit and tie. Gosh, Jacob, do you know what that would cost? I mean, it would take hundreds of yards of material. I’ll bet they couldn’t find anything to fit me even in the outsize shop.”

  Dippy began to sob again. It was amazing. Jacob Two-Two had heard the expression “weeping buckets,” but he had never actually seen it before.

  “And I’m always hungry,” Dippy moaned. “I’m just not getting enough to eat.”

  “But Dippy, my father brought you two station wagons full of rubbish only yesterday.”

  “I know, I know. I don’t blame him. Having me around must be very difficult for him. I think it would be best for everybody if I just ran away.”

  “Oh, no, Dippy. Please don’t. Please don’t.”

  “I like you, Jacob. I think you’re terrific.” Dippy blushed a darker green. “But sometimes I wish I had a girlfriend.”

  “Aw, who needs girls,” Jacob Two-Two said, irritated.

  “It’s okay for you to talk – you’re only eight. But I’ll bet when you get to be sixty-five million-plus years you’ll be interested in girls too.”

  “It’s no use brooding about it, Dippy. You’re the only dinosaur left on the planet.”

  “Maybe yes and maybe no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One day when everybody in the house was out and I was still small enough to slip through the door, I sneaked into your father’s library. I found a picture book about Canada, and there were all those high, high mountains. If there are any of us left I figure that’s where they’d be hiding out.”

  “Oh, you mean the Rockies out in B.C.,” Jacob Two-Two said.

  “B.C. Right, right!” Dippy began to beat the earth with his forelegs. “B.C. is where I come from and B.C. is where I’m a-heading for. Yippee for B.C.!”

>   “Dippy, you’re getting things mixed up. I know that in other countries B.C. stands for the years before Christ, but in Canada it stands for the province of British Columbia, which isn’t quite the same thing.”

  “It’s a good sign, though, isn’t it? B.C., B.C. If there are any of us left, that’s where they’ll be.”

  “Please stay here with me, Dippy.”

  “I’d like to, Jacob, honestly. But if I am the last of my species it just wouldn’t do for me to sit still and wait to be blown to oblivion.”

  “What are we going to do, Dippy?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m a pea-brain. Thinking is your department.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jacob Two-Two said without conviction.

  “I’ll come up with something.”

  CHAPTER 8

  ven as the two friends were deliberating, events beyond their control were already taking shape in Perry Pleaser’s office in Ottawa. The prime minister wasn’t feeling too hot. He had just returned from a disastrous national meet-the-people tour. Out there in Vancouver, he had plunged into a crowd in a shopping mall, saying, as was his habit, “Would anybody like my autograph? Or possibly some of you would like to kiss my hand? Go ahead. I don’t mind.” But when the people stepped forward it was to throw rotten eggs at him.

  They pelted him with tomatoes in beautiful downtown Edmonton. They hissed him in Toronto. They heckled him in Montreal, where a man stood up and shouted, “If you’re so clever, Perry Pleaser, tell us how long was the Seven Years War?”

  “I do not respond to trick questions.”

  The people hooted. They howled. Perry Pleaser retreated to Ottawa and summoned Professor Wacko Kilowatt to his office. “Wacko, what am I paying you for? Tell me how to restore my popularity.”