SERIALIZATION OF “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” – Chapter 19 of 61
Warble Blames Elephant Extinction on George Washington and Bemoans the Loss of PPAs
CHAPTER 19
Warble Blames Elephant Extinction on George Washington
“Aren’t you being a little hard on the fella, Warble?” Jacques asks. “After all, if George Washington hadn’t invented the peanut, we wouldn’t have peanut butter sandwiches, peanut clusters, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups(™), peanut butter cookies, the classic songs ‘Peanut Butter’ and ‘Eatin’ Goober Peas,’ the comic strip ‘Peanuts,’ the Black-Eyed Peanuts...”
Soundtrack note: If there isn’t enough time in this scene for both songs mentioned above in their entirety, just play a verse or two from each one, a ‘peanut medley’ of sorts.
“Get a grip on yourself, LaRue. You’re starting to go...nuts, I’d just about say,” Warble says. “What’s so great about all of that stuff, anyway? Those negligible, superfluous products and highly debatable ‘contributions’ to our culture you so irrelevantly mentioned certainly don’t make up for all the mayhem the old fossil caused by introducing peanuts to the scene.
“You know, LaRue,” Warble continues, pointing at the fitness trainer and using his most serious tone, “a lot of people have been killed by peanuts down through the ages."
"You mean people who were allergic to them?" Mullah sagely guesses.
"Allergic to peanuts? Whoever heard of such a cockamamie hypothesis!” Warble scoffs.
“No, I’m talking about the Great Peanut Wars that were fought in the middle ages. Those who preferred Spanish peanuts declared war on all the people who opted for Virginia peanuts. All of Europe became a bloody battlefield; even the children from Spain and Portugal got involved, driving all the Virginia peanut-fans clean out of Iberia and over into Turkey.
“But those were Europeans—we don’t really care about them much. The key point is, Americans have been deleteriously affected by the aforementioned ill-advised invention, too. The peanut envy caused at circuses and baseball games when some people have salted-in-the-shell-peanuts and others don’t have any at all has been far worse than those wars I touched on.
“But that’s not all!” Warble continues, jutting a finger into the air, really warming to his task now. “Washington set back technological progress and innovation light years by bringing forth his diabolical new legume. Hah! Who ever heard of a nut that doesn’t grow on trees, anyway?! It’s a crime against nature! A nut growing out of the ground!” Warble jeers, laughing derisively. “What sort of perverted, deviant, wicked, twisted mind could come up with such a thing? If God had meant nuts to grow out of the ground, he would’ve invented the peanut himself!”
“All right, Warble,” Marianne challenges, arms folded, “I’m waiting to hear how Washington set technology back by inventing, as you say, the Arachis hypogaea.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Ms. Trench! You should’ve been a shyster lawyer, or perhaps a Congressman. As I so plainly stated, it was the peanut--not the hydroponic arachnid--that Washington invented. And what was George’s evil conspiracy?” Warble asks rhetorically.
“This evil animal-hater deliberately set in motion the events that would cause elephants to starve,” Warble answers himself, to the edification of all present (that’s his intent, anyway). Warble begins crying crocodile tears of feigned sorrow and indignation. “And since peanuts are elephants’ main and in fact sole source of nutrition, when humans ate all the peanuts, these poor, pitiful, put-upon, poached pachyderms starved to death.”
“But,” Ward objects, ignoring or feeling no compassion for Warble’s apparently overwrought state, “How is it that George invented peanuts, as you claim, when obviously Indian and African elephants—if peanuts are, as you claim, that species’ sole source of food--had already been eating them since time immemorial?”
Warble sighs, exaggeratedly and exasperatedly, and wipes away a fake tear. “Robespierre,” Warble explains condescendingly, “Only humans can invent things, animals can’t. So how could these Native American elephants and elephants of color invent the peanut, huh? And the human inventor must, of course, be an American— only Americans can actually invent things--didn’t you pay attention at all in U.S. History class?"
“So you’re saying that Mexicans and Canadians can invent things,” Ward reasons. “Also Brazilians, Colombians, Costa Ricans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Panamanians, Paraguayans,...”
“No, gosh darn you, Robespierre! I said AMERICANS, not Mexicans, Texicans, Canucks, or anybody else crowding in on us from the top or bottom of this hallowed land of purple mountain majesties and all that jazz!
“Face it, Ward,” Warble says, fixing his image consultant with his most piercing gaze and menacing stare, “the lanky landowner was a despicable virtual poacher of pachyderms.”
“A what?” Comfy exclaims, simultaneously confused, amused, amazed and bemused by Warble’s accusations and ‘logic.’
Warble, in recounting the harm done by Washington, loses all semblance of cool. His face reddens, his jaws tighten, and he practically screams:
“IF NOT FOR THE HEARTLESS EXTERMINATION OF MAN’S BEST BEAST FRIEND, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH ELEPHANTS FOR EVERYONE TO HAVE A PPA!!!”
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” is being serialized in this space each Sunday and Thursday; it is also available in its entirety from here.
You can listen to the recording of this excerpt, by the author’s alter ego, here: