The Otter and the Skeptic

There is no such thing, the Skeptic says, as actual bonafide happiness, anywhere in nature.

            

He dismisses “happy as a lark.” Every lark is unhappily afraid of the dark. Is it owls they fear? Or general lark superstition? Whatever. How about “happy as a clam”? Doesn't that smile proclaim how glad he is? “Hardly,” says the Skeptic, locked up as the clam is in isolation, sealed off like that, he cannot even imagine a state of contentment. Or any state. Clamologists say he has no thoughts or feelings whatsoever, congealed like that in a calcium ball; just as well say happy for the likes of a stone.

            

Did somebody refer to a “pig in clover” or add a note on “hog heaven”? The Skeptic reminds us that, awaiting every sow or boar, is the little matter of untimely slaughter.

            

Who recalls that famous accumulation of happified monkeys, and the barrel they’re in? “Would you be happy in a crowded barrel,” asks the Skeptic, “finding yourself in constant contact with so many pent-up close relations?” And some people mention the domestic cat, purring sweetly on couch or capacious lap. “Listen,” says the Skeptic, “he has memorized a strategic tree to climb more or less as fast as he can whenever his life cuts to the chase and he’s in the inevitable dog-and-cat race. And if he fails to catch his quota of mice, he becomes morbid. You can see it in his eyes. Remember that, about the cat.”

           

But wait a second a minute. There happens to be the indubitable otter. There he is: in or near his river, where, quick and instant, lissome, limber, he can always out-maneuver all the fishes and he can float in the water on his air-pocketed back and, holding a rock, causally strike and ultimately crack any crayfish for a mid-day snack. They run giddily after one another’s tails on a sort of literal merry-go-round. They live in a perpetual open-air amusement park, in their riverine scenery from winter snow to summer greenery, day night morn eve. After all the negatives, the otter is the one positive completely happy creature here on earth.

            

Moral: What the Skeptic needs is—another skeptic.