Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx

Author:Harpo Marx
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2017-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

The hell with Monte Carlo. I set up my own casino, at the Villa Galanon. I ran the operation my way, and I never had a customer squawk. That was more than the boss of Monte Carlo could ever say.

I had gone to the flea market in Nice, where I bought the nuttiest thing I could find. This was a thing called a Chinese flytrap. It was a fantastic construction of bamboo, wire and string which flies could fly into but couldn’t fly out of. The Chinese flytrap was designed to be humane, which was why it was so complicated, When the flies were trapped they weren’t killed, or even injured. As long as the bottom door was shut they couldn’t get out, but they could live inside in style until they died of old age, or whatever unswatted flies die of.

I was a gambling man as well as a humanitarian, however, being equal parts Pete Penovitch and Albert Schweitzer, so I turned the flytrap into a casino.

After a lot of serious thinking (I missed Chico, who could have figured the whole thing out in a minute on the back of a pawn ticket), I arrived at what the odds should be on a fly surviving the trap. Two to one. This would give the fly a sporting chance and give the house a chance to win its rightful share as well.

What I did was to catch only a few flies at a time, then block the entrance. When I trapped a batch of customers I marked them, one by one, by dabbing a broom straw in red ink and poking it through a slit in the trap. Then I opened the door and gave them all their freedom.

Here’s where the odds came in: when a marked fly came bade and was trapped a second time, I did him in with the blunt end of a chopstick. First-time suckers got painted red and let loose. Second-time losers got squashed. (I used to give the same kind of odds to mosquitoes who pestered me when I practiced the harp. I would only swat the ones who sang higher than the A-flat above middle C. The rest went free,)

I was amazed at how few flies came back to the trap. I’d never dreamed so many flies would be smart enough to know they had a good thing going at 2-1 and would stay away.

Beatrice and Alice were very impressed by what the Chinese flytrap revealed, to wit: your average housefly was a much better gambler than your average person gave him credit for. Aleck was more alarmed than impressed. He said I was dooming the human race by developing a super-intelligent race of flies. But that didn’t stop him from betting on the flies against the trap. When he ran his winnings up to fifteen francs I declared the bank closed and went out of business. Now I knew what it was like to be on the side of management. I couldn’t cover the nut for red ink.

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