Animal Tales

by Terry Jones

“Yes!” exclaimed TV News Director. “And that’s Chalky!” he cried, pointing at the toad that Adam now had in his hand.

  “Clear off! The lot of you!” shouted Adam. “This is private property and you are trespassing – same as these toads!”

  “Those toads have the right to go wherever they want!” shouted the Naturalist.

  “What are you going to do with those toads?” asked the Lady Reporter.

  “That’s none of your business,” replied Adam.

  “He’s going to kill them!” shouted the Naturalist.

  “After they’ve marched so far!” exclaimed several of the TV people.

  “Chalky has worked so hard to catch up with the others!” cried cried the Lady Presenter’s Personal Assistant.

  “And poor Doris!” shouted the Sound Recordist. “To escape death on the motorway so many times and then end up in a sack!”

  “It’s not right!” they all shouted together, and so did half a million viewers, sitting in front of their television sets. “He can’t be allowed to get away with that!” And the television viewers leapt out of their comfy chairs, and jumped into their cars and raced to the beautiful valley, with tyres screeching and engines roaring, filling the beautiful valley with fumes from their exhaust pipes. Then they swarmed around the house that Adam had built across the Toad Road.

  First of all they shook the doors. Then they started banging on the windows. Then they climbed onto the roof and started tearing off the tiles. And do you know what? By the end of the day there was nothing left of Adam’s house: it was lying in pieces across the Toad Road.

  The toads were all released and finally made it to the pond where they were born. There they spawned and the next year there were more toads than ever in the beautiful valley.

  As for Adam, well he was never seen again. He probably still thinks he can do as he likes, but I can tell you one thing: he’s never ever built another house anywhere within sight of a Toad Road.

  WONDERS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

  SWEET AND SOUR WALLABIES

  These loveable little creatures are a firm favourite with children, parents and the hard-of-hearing. They bounce all over your plate, providing hours of hilarious fun for the kids, and a moment of relaxation for parents. The hard-of-hearing also appreciate the loud shouts and piercing screams of the children as they stab each other with their forks, in their vain attempts to catch their dinner.

  THE PENGUIN WITHOUT A NAME

  IN THE EMPTY WASTES OF THE ANTARCTIC, where the wind blasts across the ice and there is more sleet in the air than air, a small penguin was standing with his back to the icy gusts. The snow was piling up on its back, and rapidly turning to ice. The penguin just stood there, with its head down.

  Just then a kindlier wind happened to blow past, and it noticed how miserable the penguin looked. So it circled around the penguin and said these words.

  “What’s the matter, little penguin? You look so sad.”

  The penguin looked up for a moment and said “Humph!” and then it looked down again, as the kindlier wind circled around and around it.

  “Tell me,” said the wind.

  “What?” asked the penguin.

  “What makes you so sad?” asked the kindlier wind.

  “Well look at this place,” snorted the penguin. “Look at these empty wastes. Nothing but ice and snow for thousands of miles. Icy mountains. Icy plains. Nothing but emptiness and cold and darkness.”

  “This is the Antarctic,” said the kindlier wind. “This is what it’s like.”

  “And look at me,” returned the penguin. “I have nothing. No home. No parents. No children. No possessions. No friends. Nothing. I don’t even have a name. How more truly miserable could a creature be?”

  The wind wound around the penguin and ruffled its smooth feathers just ever so slightly.

  “Walk on,” whispered the wind. “I will go with you.”

  “Walk?” exclaimed the penguin. “I can only waddle. Look at me! I’m a bird and yet I can’t even fly! I’m not made for this vast emptiness.”

  “Walk on,” whispered the wind again. “I will go with you, and let us see what we shall see.”

  So the penguin reluctantly started to waddle across the vast emptiness of ice and snow that is the Antarctic.

  Eventually they came to the edge of a cliff.

  “What do you see?” asked the wind.

  “I see a vast plain of nothingness. Ice and snow and blasting wind. Nothing else.”

  “Perhaps your name is Eric?” said the wind.

  “I don’t have a name,” retorted the penguin. “I don’t have anything.”

  So the wind led the penguin on. They took a path that went down the side of the cliff, and soon they were at the bottom,

  “What do you see now?” asked the wind.

  “I see the same,” replied the penguin. “There is nothing. I have nothing. Not even a name.”

  “Perhaps your name is Arbuthnot?” said the wind.

  “No. I don’t have a name,” answered the penguin. “How many more times do I have to tell you?”

  So the wind led the little penguin on across the wind-swept plain, over the drifts of snow, over the occasional crevice and round the snow-strewn rocks that stuck up out of the ice. Eventually they came to the edge of the sea.

  “Now what do you see?” asked the kindlier wind.

  “Nothing,” said the penguin. “I see dark, cold, cold water stretching as far as the eye can see into the gloomy distance. Nothing but icy water and waves. Nothing.”

  “Jump,” said the kindler wind.

  “What?!” exclaimed the penguin. “It’s bad enough here on dry land! I’m not going to get wet through and colder than I already am!”

  “Jump!” said the wind again.

  “Not on your life!” exclaimed the penguin. “There’s leopard seals in there, lying in wait under the ice, that would eat me up with six little bites. There are orcas and sea lions that would guzzle me up without thinking twice.”

  “You are right,” whispered the wind. “The sea is a dangerous place for you penguins. On the land, you have no enemies, and so you can afford to just waddle your way along without having to rush. What a luxury!”

  “I’d be crazy to leap in there!” exclaimed the penguin.

  “Hold out your flippers,” whispered the wind.

  “What for?”

  “Just hold them out. That’s right” And as the penguin held out his flippers, the kindly wind blew a gust that was so strong it knocked the penguin head over heels and it tumbled into the cold Antarctic sea.

  And the strange thing is, the moment it was under the waves, the penguin suddenly felt happy for the first time in its life. It didn’t feel cold, because its feathers kept a layer of warm air around its body. And it found it could move so easily through the waters that it was better than flying.

  The kindly wind watched the penguin diving down a hundred feet or more until it disappeared in the gloomy depths of the Antarctic Sea. Then suddenly it was zooming back up again until it broke the surface with a fish in its mouth.

  “What’s your name?” called the wind.

  “Sea-Bird!” shouted the penguin, and swallowed the fish.

  WONDERS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

  THE MAHATMA STAGE ANT

  This obnoxious insect is considered a pest throughout the subcontinent. Not only does it bore through all woodwork in theatres (making the stages spectacularly unsafe) it also takes over entire productions with self-indulgent and bombastic interpretations of the major classical roles.

  On one occasion the ants reduced Titus Andronicus to the battle sequences, and managed to drag them out for four hours, prompting one critic to remark that if he saw one more dismembered head or another twisted thorax he would personally come and stamp on every ant on stage. On another occasion, they turned a perfectly adequate production of Othello into a travesty by playing Desdemona as Mrs Potato Head from Toy Story 2 and Othello as the Donkey
in Shrek. “The ants totally missed the sublime passion of Shakespeare’s tragedy,” complained one critic. “By representing Iago as Father Christmas,” wrote another, “the ants turned what should have been a profoundly moving theatrical experience into the equivalent of a visit to Santa’s Grotto.”

  These are said to be the only representatives of the animal kingdom that Ghandi was tempted to tread on.

  THE IMAGINARY DRAGON

  A DRAGON WAS ONCE TAKING AFTERNOON TEA with his friend the Gryphon. “What the devil’s the matter with you, Dragon?” exclaimed the Gryphon, who was never in the best of moods. “You look as if you’d swallowed a hedgehog!”

  “I wish I had,” murmured the Dragon.

  “Balderdash!” exclaimed the Gryphon. “Nobody could possibly want to swallow a hedgehog!”

  “I might feel better than I do now,” said the Dragon.

  “You make me cross!” exclaimed the Gryphon, who was always cross anyway. “I can’t stand you being miserable! It’s like sitting opposite a road accident!”

  “Sorry!” said the Dragon.

  “All right! All right!” said the Gryphon irritably. “You’d better tell me what’s wrong.”

  “You’ll only laugh,” replied the Dragon.

  “Of course I won’t,” grumbled the Gryphon, frowning even more than usual. “Scout’s honour!”

  “Well…” said the Dragon cautiously, and he looked hard at the Gryphon with his old, sad eyes. “I think I may not exist.”

  By the time the Gryphon had stopped laughing, the Dragon was on his way home, and the Gryphon had to run to catch his friend up.

  “Come back, Dragon!” roared the Gryphon. “You can’t leave a perfectly good cup of tea half drunk!”

  Now even though the Dragon had been looking so miserable, he had been enjoying that cup of tea, so he eventually allowed the Gryphon to persuade him to return to the tea table, and they carried on where they had left off.

  “Where the devil did you get a tom-fool notion like that from?” asked the Gryphon in his gruff way.

  “Well,” replied the Dragon. “I was reading this book that said dragons are mythological creatures – that is they are imaginary creatures that don’t actually exist!”

  “Horse-feathers!” exclaimed the Gryphon. “You’re sitting here having tea with me! How could you possibly not exist?”

  “Well,” said the Dragon slowly, “suppose that I were just a product of your imagination? You’re just imagining I’m sitting here having tea with you?”

  “But…but…but…” stuttered the Gryphon, who was by this time was becoming even more irritated than normal. “I’ve never heard such arrant nonsense in my life!” And he punched the Dragon right on the nose.

  “Ow!” exclaimed the Dragon, holding his nose, which is always the tenderest part of a dragon. “What did you do that for?”

  “To prove to you that you are not the product of my imagination!” exclaimed the Gryphon. “If you were an imaginary creature you wouldn’t be able to feel anything when I punched you on the nose. You wouldn’t feel anything, see anything or hear anything!”

  The Dragon looked at the Gryphon with his old, sad eyes, and thought for a long time – possibly a couple of hundred years – and then finally said:

  “How do we know?”

  “How do we know?! How do we know?!” exclaimed the Gryphon, whose tea had gone cold while he was waiting for the Dragon to reply. “What the devil are you wittering on about now, Dragon? How do we know what?”

  “How do we know,” replied the Dragon, “that imaginary creatures – creatures that somebody has imagined and created – can’t feel and see and hear?”

  “Well it’s obvious they can’t!” exclaimed the Gryphon. “If they’ve just been created out of thin air how could they possible feel or see or hear?”

  “But everybody and everything has been created in one way or another…” replied the Dragon.

  ‘BUT YOU’RE SITTING HERE TALKING TO ME!” exploded the Gryphon who by this time had had more than enough of this conversation.

  The Dragon looked at him with his old, sad eyes and said:

  “Ah! That’s the problem. How do we know that this whole event – me sitting here having tea with you – hasn’t been made up by somebody, who has then written it down on a bit of paper?”

  “I can’t stand all this nonsense!” exclaimed the exasperated Gryphon. “Look! We’ll find somebody else, who will be able to confirm that we do exist!”

  So they went to the Unicorn.

  “Unicorn!” exclaimed the Gryphon in his gruff way, “Dragon here thinks he may not exist – that he may be just an imaginary creature that somebody dreamed-up! Tell him that he’s real!” But the Unicorn looked rather doubtful.

  “Oh dear!” he said. “That’s serious! If Dragon isn’t real, perhaps none of us are!”

  “Absolute piffle!” roared the Gryphon. “You’re all talking Twaddle! Bunkum and Tommyrot! I won’t listen to this drivel a moment longer!”

  “Unicorn has a point,” said the Dragon.

  “Very well,” grumbled the Gryphon, “we’ll go ask the Sphinx!”

  “But you know the Sphinx’s answers often create more problems than the original question,” ventured the Unicorn.

  “But sometimes,” said the Gryphon, “those new problems help you to solve the original problem.”

  So the three friends went along to the Sphinx, and the Gryphon said: “Look here, Sphinx, my two friends have got some tom-fool notion in their heads that they don’t exist. They think they might be imaginary creatures that someone has dreamt up.”

  “In fact,” said the Dragon, “this whole conversation may have been made up by somebody and written down on a bit of paper.”

  “How can we be sure it isn’t?” asked the Unicorn. “How can we be sure that we exist?”

  The three friends waited for the Sphinx to answer. But the Sphinx took his time – perhaps a couple of thousand years – before he finally opened his mouth, and a huge booming voice echoed over the desert sands.

  The three friends trembled, as they heard the Sphinx’s words:

  “Nothing exists,” said the Sphinx.

  Well the three friends were so bemused by the Sphinx’s answer they didn’t know what to say. But they didn’t want to prolong the conversation for another two thousand years, so they said:

  “Thank you very much, Sphinx, very helpful,” and walked back across the burning desert sands.

  “Well that didn’t get us anywhere!” exclaimed the Gryphon. “What a waste of two thousand years!”

  “If nothing exists, then we certainly don’t exist!” said the Unicorn dismally. “It’s really most unsettling to think that we are all just imaginary characters in somebody else’s story!”

  “Yes!” agreed the Dragon. “It’s even worse than I feared. It’s not just me – nothing exists!”

  The three friends walked on in the silence of Dreamland, until all at once the Dragon stopped and sat down.

  “Wait a minute!” he cried. “I’ve just had a thought!” And then he started laughing and laughing.

  Well of course the Gryphon got very annoyed.

  “What the devil are you laughing at, Dragon?” he said.

  “Yes!” exclaimed the Unicorn. “How can you laugh? If nothing exists and we are all just imaginary things – it’s nothing to laugh about!” And the Unicorn and the Gryphon stared at the Dragon as if he were quite mad.

  “But don’t you see?” exclaimed the Dragon. “The Sphinx’s answer solves the problem!”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” growled the Gryphon.

  “Yes!” said the Unicorn. “Explain yourself!”

  “Well,” said the Dragon, “it cannot be that nothing exists, as the Sphinx well knows, because if we were all imaginary creatures and this whole story were the product of somebody else’s imagination – then at least we know for certain that imagination exists! And as long as imagination exists
then we exist even if we’re imaginary!”

  And the three friends, the Dragon, the Gryphon and the Unicorn sat there in the vast plain of Dreamland, laughing and laughing, until the sun set, and they went home to dream their own dreams.

  WONDERS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

  THE BOTTOM-FEEDING WARTHOG

  This curious creature feeds by sitting on its food, which it then ingests through its bottom. Since its principle diet consists of caviar mixed with a little foie gras and washed down with a bottle of the best Champagne, it has considerable difficulty in finding enough to eat. It can be seen hanging around street corners, swearing at passing sailors and demanding rent-free accommodation for playwrights. No one knows why.

  The Bottom-Feeding Warthog is doubly unlucky: it cannot taste the fine food and drink it lives on, and, since it excretes via its mouth, the process is always accompanied by mournful cries of disgust. It regards itself as the most unfortunate of animals and is prone to serious bouts of depression.

  It is also the single biggest argument against evolution.