Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

Author:David Sedaris
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fables, Humor, Form, Humorous, Form - Essays, Short Stories (single author), Fiction, Fiction - General, American Satire And Humor, Animals, Essays, General, Bestiaries, American wit and humor
ISBN: 9780316038393
Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Published: 2010-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

The Cow and the Turkey

The cow was notoriously cheap, so it surprised everyone when she voted yes for the secret Santa scheme. It was the horse’s suggestion, and she backed it immediately, saying, “I choose the turkey.”

The pig, who considered himself an authority on all things gifty, cleared his throat. “That’s not actually the way it works,” he said. “It’s secret, see, so we each draw a name and keep it to ourselves until Christmas morning.”

“Why do you always have to be like that?” the cow asked, and the duck sighed, “Here we go.”

“First you ask me to give someone a Christmas present,” the cow continued, “and then you tell me it has to be done your way. Like, ‘Oh, I have four legs so I’m better than everyone else.’ ”

“Don’t you have four legs?” the pig asked.

The cow loosed something between a moan and a sigh. “All right, just because you have a curly tail,” she said.

The pig tried looking behind him, but all he could see were his sides. “Is it curly curly?” he asked the rooster. “Or curly kinky?”

“The point is that I’m tired of being pushed around,” the cow said. “I think a lot of us are.”

This was her all over, so rather than spending the next week listening to her complain, it was decided that the cow would give to the turkey and that everyone else would keep their names a secret.

There were, of course, no shops in the barnyard, which was a shame, as all of the animals had money, coins mainly, dropped by the farmer and his plump, moody children as they went about their chores. The cow once had close to three dollars and gave it to a calf the family was taking into town. “I want you to buy me a knapsack,” she’d told him. “Just like the one the farmer’s daughter has, only bigger and blue instead of green. Can you remember that?”

The calf had tucked the money into his cheek before being led out of the barn. “And wouldn’t you know it,” the cow later complained, “isn’t it just my luck that he never came back?”

She’d spent the first few days of his absence in a constant, almost giddy state of anticipation. Watching the barn door, listening for the sound of the truck, waiting for that knapsack—something that would belong only to her.

When it no longer made sense to hope, she turned to self-pity, then rage. The calf had taken advantage of her, had spent her precious money on a bus ticket and boarded thinking, So long, sucker.

It was a consolation, then, to overhear the farmer talking to his wife and learn that “taking an animal into town” was a euphemism for hitting him in the head with an electric hammer. So long, sucker.

Milking put the cow in close proximity to humans, much closer than any of the other animals, and she learned a lot by keeping her ears open: who was dating whom, how much it cost to fill a gas tank, any number of useful little tidbits—the menu for Christmas dinner, for instance.

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