How to Attract the Wombat. Will Cuppy
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to Tibet and adjacent regions of Central Asia. He has a long, heavy fringe on his sides to show that he is a Yak. This trimming is quaint and old-fashioned but I wouldn’t call it so fearfully amusing. It may rate a quiet smile but it is not a belly laugh. It catches dust and dirt and miscellaneous debris, of which there is a great deal in Tibet. The Yak should be sent to the cleaner. Tibetans are crazy about Yaks. They cannot see how other countries manage to get along without these useful animals.2 Tibetan farmers, or Drokpas, live in yurts or tents made of Yak hair and practice polyandry because there are more men than women in Tibet. When a Drokpa woman has two husbands, one of them tends to the Yak.3 Tibetans drink from thirty to fifty cups of buttered tea every day. This is made of brick tea, parched barley meal, or tsamba, salt, soda, rancid Yak butter, and germs. And they wonder why life seems so futile. Yaks are fine for riding in the Himalayas, if you are not the nervous type. They are apt to throw their loads and they have an odd habit of looking over the edges of cliffs to see what goes on down there. Wild Yaks are really wild. The bulls have hair on their chest a yard long for Yak appeal. They wander around.4 Old bulls recline on the hillsides and look at the sunset. Yaks have more brawn than brain. They love the frightful sub-zero weather of the Tibetan plateaus. When traveling as a missionary in Tibet in 1846, Abbé Huc passed a herd of fifty Yaks who had been frozen solid to the last Yak while crossing the Tsangpo River. Only their heads were visible above the surface, but he could see through the ice that their legs had been frozen instantaneously in the various correct swimming positions. I hate to be critical, but we all know how one’s favorite stories tend to improve. I do believe Abbé Huc saw a Yak who was very, very cold.
1 Or Cow, as the case may be.
2 They don’t.
3 Old Tibetan maxim: Home is where the Yak is.
4 Wild Yaks charge at high speed and it’s no use saying “Nice Yakky! Nice Yakky!” They do not understand English.
THE WART HOG
Consider the Wart Hog. He has bags under his eyes and four tusks in his jaws and large protuberances, or bumps, all over his face. The Wart Hog cannot help it. He was born like that. The way people talk about him, you would think he did it on purpose. The Wart Hog is often called the ugliest of all animals, but the Rhinoceros is uglier because he is larger and there is more of him to be ugly.1 We should try to forget the Wart Hog’s bad points and think of his good ones, only he hasn’t any. We cannot say, “After all, he has nice eyes,” for that would be a plain, downright falsehood. His eyes are small and shifty and mean-looking. Even if they were wonderful there would still be those bags under them. Yes, the Wart Hog knows he is ugly. You can’t look like that and not know it. If people screamed and ran whenever they saw you, wouldn’t you suspect that something was wrong?2 Maybe the Wart Hog is not very sensitive. I hope not. I’m afraid nothing much can be done to improve the Wart Hog’s appearance.3 You might work on one or two Wart Hogs for years, but their children would be as ugly as ever, since beauty treatments are not inherited. You would see at a glance that they came of a long line of Wart Hogs.4 The father and mother Wart Hog do not live together much. Love is blind but not that blind. Sometimes they meet in the forest where the light is more flattering. The late Dr. Crisp of London believed that a cross between the Wart Hog and the Domestic Pig might produce a superior kind of bacon with a streak of fat and a streak of lean all the way through, but he does not seem to have tried it. Dr. Crisp liked his bacon just so.5 I am sorry to say that the Wart Hog has a nasty disposition. He isn’t very bright, either. Yet we can all learn something from him if we observe him closely and meditate upon what we see. The Wart Hog teaches us this useful lesson: Don’t be a Wart Hog.
1 I have moods when I think the Hippopotamus is ugly, too.
2 In southeastern Africa the Wart Hog is called Indhlovudawani, a name which means, “Oh, bother, there’s that awful animal again!”
3 A correspondent inquires, “If the Wart Hog would try to think beautiful thoughts all the time, would it help?” No.
4 Infant Wart Hogs resemble both sides of the family.
5 When the King of Ashantee sent Queen Victoria a Wart Hog in 1861, Her Majesty presented it to the Zoo almost instantly. Can you blame her?
PROBLEM MAMMALS
THE OPOSSUM
The Opussum is a marsupial and marsupials are animals who carry their young around in an abdominal pouch or marsupium.1 As they have done this for millions and millions of years, they are not likely to stop, no matter how you and I feel about it.2 Baby Opossums are born in a rudimentary or unfinished state, from four to twenty at once. They are only half an inch long and smaller around than a Honey Bee. This seems hardly worth while, but it suits the mother Opossum, and she is the one directly involved. She thinks the other animals are crazy for having such enormous babies. So she nurses them inside her pouch for two or three months until they reach a reasonable size. During the first two weeks she closes the pouch by means of special Opossum muscles and you wouldn’t know there was anything in there. If one of the children comes out before his time she hisses, “You get right back in the marsupium!”3 Young Opossums are fully developed in a year or so. They have thumbs instead of big toes on their hind feet and not a scrap of morals. The males are just awful. When cornered the Opossum falls on his side and pretends to be dead, hoping the enemy will consider him unfit for food. Some predatory animals do not eat other animals unless they show signs of life. On the other hand, some do. That is the catch in the Opossum’s technique. Besides, we all know he is playing possum. Those things get around.4 Professor Halstead believes Opossums faint from fright and are not really playing possum at all. He states that when they open their eyes they mutter, “Where am I?” The Virginia Opossum is the biggest and best Opossum in the world. He is found in twenty-nine states. Opossums have survived largely because of their arboreal habits. They have lots of fun hanging by their tails and eating persimmons until they almost burst. By and large, there is much to be said for living in trees. Well, it’s too late to think of that now.
1 A few marsupials have no abdominal pouch and are therefore hard to identify. If you have one, however, there is no doubt what you are.
2 Opossums go back to the middle of the Upper Cretaceous, would you believe it?
3 The Opossum language consists of faint hisses, growls and grunts. It is perfectly intelligible to insiders.
4 The Opossum thinks everybody is as dumb as he is — always a dangerous assumption.
THE KANGAROO
Kangaroos live in Australia. They come to this country sometimes, but you can tell at a glance that they do not belong around here. They carry their young in fur-lined pouches instead of perambulators.1 We consider them very primitive in their notions of anatomy and they think we look awkward with wheels out in front. It’s all in the point of view.2 All Kangaroo babies are named Joey. This would not do for us either. We barely manage to keep things straight as it is, and that would be the last straw. A Joey is only an inch long at birth. He grows up in the pouch for four or five months. Then he is supposed to get out, but sometimes a Joey will stay there even after he has started a vegetable diet outside and is so large that his mother can hardly jump. He thinks he owns the place. Anyway, she knows where he is. He’s in the bag.3