The Bengal Tiger and the Himalayan Yak

“I am more and more plagued by a single question,” said the yak from Nepal: “What is the meaning of it All?”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said the Bengal, “and sorry that you are not well.”

“Who said anything about being sick?”

“You did. I distinctly heard ‘plagued.'”

“It was just an expression, a figure of speech, a vague make-do word. You know.”

“Yes, I know. So—it just popped into your head, a sort of accident? Well, there are very few accidents in the ways of the mind. Everything is relevant. Furthermore, for your information, whenever somebody speaks in virtual capitals, saying ‘Life’ or, as you said, ‘All’, they are not empty locutions either but broad, urgent, fraught, and he is saying that he is already lost in some wide catch-all empyrean, an indefinable Every Place or No Place—actually annihilation—and probably for a long while already—gone, as they say. How far, we shall soon determine.”

“‘Gone?’ I’m insane?”

Flora

What is the most intelligent plant?

Asparagus.

Why?

Because asparagus is the most monolithic of plants, with the loveliest fern lace in the world That shadowing lace helps keep its ground free of weeds, its immediate area phenomenally clear.

That doesn’t mean it has a mind.

No, no central brain. But maybe there’s mind in petals, stalks and flowers and—while we’re at this—just ordinary arboreal wood. Let’s mention trees.

A tree has bark for cellulose skin, foliage and fir that might do for hair; branches like arms, roots like feet, flowing sap resembling blood, stomata for breathing ambient air; capillary suction to pump up water; pods, cones, parasols in genital profusion. Isn’t it all elaborate, doesn’t it stun? And why not a sense, an over-all sense, a general, informing innate mind-in-matter, a totally sensate unified mood in any tree as a whole, there where it’s stood?

And take all the crops that became good fodder, multiplied by our most diligent tending—can’t we add that also as somewhat mind-bending? Who, exactly, is doing what to whom. Is it the man, at last, or is it the bloom? Who is superior to the other, giving or taking the relevant trouble? Which of the two is really more clever, who is the one who is thinking double, or treble?

And how about this: who figured out how to use the sun, the start of all life and everyone? You think photosynthesis was the work of fools? Nothing will outdo the grasses and trees, that trick they all had up their leaves.

All this begs the question of actual animal and sheer human brain power. Yes. But . . .

Moral: Life that doesn’t have an I.Q may wonderfully succeed or plain up

and down do.

The Fables in Flicks

About the carrot-eating Bunny, the kinetic Road Runner and coy Tweety-bird, remember that their enemies, not themselves, were doomed, time and again, over and over. Even if Elmer Fudd’s rifle was raised and exploded, he never had a chance (and the rabbit outrageously knew it), nor did Wile E. Coyote (and the Road Runner smilingly knew it), nor did Sylvester the Cat (and the canary gleefully knew it). Life was directly reversed in the cartoons, where the little and weak were constant winners, always with a smirk on their faces: the know-it-all infallible rabbit, the wise guy whirligig Road Runner, the smart-aleck superior canary. After a while, if their enemies weren’t also so sure of themselves, we would have wanted all three taken down.
           
Moral: It isn’t all that charming being smug or snide, even if you’ve got the writers on your side.

The Parrot

District Attorney:       For the court record, your name, sir?

Witness, Parrot:        Polly.

D.A.                            Is that your full name? Don’t you bear a longer appellation?

Parrot:                        If you’re suggesting Wannacracker, no.

Judge (to Parrot):     Answer the question directly, please.

Parrot:                        I am Polly Z. Psitlaciformes, according to the book.

D.A.:                          What’s the Z stand for?

Parrot:                       Zygodactyl, meaning pair-toed, unlike, say, the stork or the rook.

D.A.:                          That is a mouthful, if I may say so.

Parrot:                        I don’t see why: you’re here to ask a series of predictable dumb questions,                                             not to say anything in particular.

D.A.:                          Your Honor—

Parrot:                       Withdrawn.

D.A. (to Parrot):        You have been accused, among other things, of complete, off-the-wall                                                     smart-ass remarks that frequently deviate into sense.

Parrot:                       That may be. It depends.