Category Archives: Humour

It was four years, eleven months and three days ago that, unbeknownst to our neighbors (since our homeowners association would have said no), I launched into space my satellite SamanthaBee, whose five-year mission would be the flyby and Instagram photo-slam of the all-but-forgotten planet Honeydew.

I am pleased to announce that today, quietly, without all the fanfare of the Juno mission, SamanthaBee has entered the aurasphere of Honeydew and transmitted the first data ever from this sweet planet, which I am privileged to share with you on this very special day in our nation.

As it turns out, Honeydew is quite similar to the fifth planet in our solar system, Jupiter,  but there are several fascinating differences (see artist’s rendition below).

First, spectrophotometers on SamanthaBee have detected a fruity aura around Honeydew, comprised of aromatic compounds that only an organic chemist or Christian Dior janitor would be able to identify.  No such scent emanates from the surface of Jupiter, which some attribute to the powerful odor-fighting protection of Right Guard.™

Both Jupiter and Honeydew have outer rinds.  Scientists speculate that these rinds evolved to conceal the planet’s edible (and delicious) interior from hungry interstellar predators.  This adaptation has enabled the planets to survive for over five billion years, and without costly refrigeration.

Instrument readings by SamanthaBee suggest that the Edible Region of Honeydew serves only eight to ten, whereas that of Jupiter can feed several thousands.  Noted astronomers and Golden Corral salad bar attendants who I consulted for this post found this surprising, because in their experience, they never seem to run out of honeydew.  We will have to wait for a future mission to clear up this mystery.

Every planet — even Earth! — has icky stuff inside that it is ashamed of and wants to hide.  In the case of Honeydew, SamanthaBee has discovered that the planet has a slimy glop of seeds and connective fibers in its interior, which could be the burned-out remnants of primordial supernovae or, as some recently posited, the place where pumpkins go to die.  Jupiter, by contrast, does not have a well-defined locus of shame but just a brownish-gray decayed center that no explorer with any decency should probe very deeply.

Finally, the seismic data I just received from SamanthaBee has confirmed that Honeydew has no pit.  This is another point of difference with Jupiter, whose pit is roughly the size of eleven hundred trillion avocados.  Holy guacamole!

There are sure to be more jaw-dropping findings as SamanthaBee continues its mission.  After completing its flyby of Honeydew, SamanthaBee will travel onward to the outermost reaches of the Melon System, where it will attempt to make contact with psychic Gary Spivey (press photo at right).  I will keep my readers informed. In the meantime, Happy Birthday, America, from Mission Control.

At just four months of age, Sammy the Snake suffered a terrible loss: his mother was run over by a motorcycle as she tried to cross the road in sunny Milford State Park in Kansas where they lived.  It being such a critical time for mother-son bonding, the park ranger hoped another female snake would adopt Sammy, but they all just slithered away.  So the nurturing ranger decided to find a caretaker for Sammy outside the serpent family.

Luckily, the ranger heard that the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas had successfully paired an orphaned pot-bellied pig with a mouse.  Hoping for a similar outcome, the ranger moved Sammy to the University’s Student Farm  and then found a mouse that lived behind the cafeteria, the one that the food workers had named Morty.

Why a mouse?  Mice might not seem like the most caring of animals, but years of research have demonstrated that their level of altrusim is just less than that of ninth-grade humans, a species well known for empathy.  Mice remember other mice, they know left turns from right turns in mazes, and they twitch their whiskers in distinct, emotional rhythms when sizing up other species.  So, mice bonding with other animals is not so unlikely, especially with snakes, who are bright and expressive and rely so heavily on their tongues.

Still, the attempt to pair the two didn’t start out well.  When they first met, Sammy chased Morty around the water dish, coiling and rising up to appear as threatening as possible.  Morty fled — as mouse instincts demand — and burrowed in the mulch for hours, hoping that Sammy’s sensitive tongue would not detect him.

After one-hundred-twenty-four days of wary gestures and tentative tongue-flicks, the pair finally accepted each other, and the effort proved to be worth its danger-filled beginning.

“I still remember the day Morty gave the sniff of death to a vole that Sammy was about to consume,” said Dr. Peter Martin of the University’s Deep Well Biology Lab and known to his colleagues as “Uncle Petrie.”  As Dr. Martin would later testify, “We knew they were truly goombahs when they started to sleep cuddled up together.  I must admit, we were concerned that Sammy would coil up and crush Morty by mistake!”

Once the bond was made, snake and mouse were inseparable.  Being noctural, they would nap together in the day and move about at night, hunting for food.  Morty would rest his bristly tail on Sammy’s scaly back as they explored the enclosure and searched for snacks.  The staff expected Sammy to imitate the food-gathering habits of the more-experienced Morty, but instead the mouse became the copycat, even attempting to snare a cricket (not typically part of a mouse’s diet).

The well-meaning University Student Farm had always planned to reintroduce Sammy to  his family in the park where he was born.  But as he was being readied for release, Sammy became ill from a twisted intestine, and Morty disappeared.  Veterinarians were unable to save Sammy and could not locate Morty.  Sammy was just fifteen months into what might have been a fifteen-year lifespan.

The staff of the University of Kansas Student Farm were heartbroken, of course, but they all share the hope that Morty has survived to make other warm interspecies friendships.  But so far, other than some moldy tomatoes, there has been no sign of life around the dumpster behind the cafeteria.