But enough of the Rogers and Hammerstein
parodies. If you’ve been following the goings-on in this corner of the World
Wide Web (and if you have been following them, hurry up and catch them,
before they get away from you), you’ll know that folks here in Funsville take a
special interest in the discovery of new species of fauna. (The evidence can be
found here and here—go ahead and click—we’ll be right here, waiting for you to
come back.)
We in Funsville take a justifiable, yet
still somehow excessive, degree of pride in our ability to identify and catalogue
the arkload of previously undiscovered forms of animalia which reside in our
hometown and environs. It must be something in the water. Or maybe people in
Funsville just see things differently. Come to think of it, that’s probably
what it is—the nearest optometrist is fifty miles from here.
The point is that we take this stuff
seriously, to the brink of sheer and utter hubris. When we all heard through
the zoological grapevine that a new species of owl had been discovered in Oman,
we said “so what?”
That’s exactly what we said, since that’s
the name of the owl that was discovered in Funsville a few years back.
The So What Owl is a distant relative of
the saw-whet owl, but one not known for showing up at family reunions or
sending thank-you notes for Christmas presents. This wonder of the avian world
possesses the unique ability to do note-for-note reproductions of the trumpet
solos from Miles Davis records. The most familiar portion of its repertoire of
calls leans heavily on selections from the album Kind of Blue—although
during the mating season one or two of the more haunting ballads from Sketches
of Spain come into prominence.
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For years, talk of the So What Owl consisted
of nothing more than legends, apocrypha, urban myths, and/or incoherent drunken
pick-up lines, all mostly heard at closing time. After considerable bickering and
dickering (also mostly at closing time), the new species was finally confirmed by
the Funsville chapter of the Autobahn Society (this is not a typo—the
organization was founded by a philanthropist who suffered grievous remorse
after running over a covey of quail while vacationing in Germany).
The discovery of the So What Owl has opened
the door to legitimate, semi-legitimate, and merely entertaining claims for
other jazz-based wildlife in the Funsville area, such as the Getz Weasel, the Bix
Beiderbecke Bison, Lucky Thompson’s Gazelle, the Pee Wee Russell Terrier (a
feral crossbreed which lives only in abandoned Model A Fords), the Suite Yardbird, and the
Djanghart Rhino—but not (thankfully, and for obvious reasons) the Thelonious
Monkey. Without running the risk of
making an even worse pun than that (I’m going to make one, but I couldn’t care
less how bad it is, so it’s really not much of a risk at all), I’ll simply close by saying “owl be seeing you”.
Uncle Fun
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