TALES OF PLURALITY
Originally published in the New Yorker online.
One day a shrewdness of apes encountered a stench of skunks.
The head ape called out, “Hey, who cut the cheese?”
Then the head skunk walked over and sprayed him, saying, “Who’s the shrewd one now, my simian friend?”
An owl was running for reelection in a parliament of owls, despite a recent scandal involving a dule of doves. “Let my constituents decide!” he defiantly told a bevy of reporters.
A crash of rhinos lay bleeding on the highway in the wreckage of their self-driving Tesla, as a tower of giraffes rubbernecked ghoulishly.
A conspiracy of lemurs were members of QAnon. An unkindness of ravens called them a bunch of idiots.
A lone elk came upon a gang of elk. By chance, he was wearing the colors of an opposing gang, and they stabbed him to death.
A knot of frogs were late for a business meeting with a cackle of hyenas. “Sorry, but we were tied up!” quipped one of the frogs. It was a lame joke, but the hyenas couldn’t help but laugh.
The legless minister delivered his latest sermon before a congregation of alligators
A loveliness of ladybugs were walking by a construction site and a labor of moles in hard hats let loose with catcalls. Ironically, a nearby clowder of woke cats remained respectfully silent.
A sedge of bitterns held its annual stockholders’ meeting and decided unanimously to hire a public relations firm to spread the word about bitterns.
A band of gorillas performed at an Open Stage Night and went over big with a zeal of zebras. But when an intrusion of cockroaches requested “Stairway to Heaven,” the band confessed that they didn’t know it, and even the zebras lost their zeal.
When Jenny Craig closed, a bloat of hippopotami switched to Nutrisystem.
An ambush of tigers waited for the stagecoach to enter the mountain pass, guns drawn. “It’s a shame about the epidemic of crime in blue states,” said a pitying of Republican turtledoves, gratuitously.
A business of ferrets was failing. Many blamed its CEO, Elon Musk Ox, and his herd mentality.
A murder of crows were discovered standing over the dead bodies of a clew of worms.
A sleuth of bears investigated the crime, and the crows were arrested.
“This is going to be a tough case,” said their defense attorney, a badger. “Harder than clowdering cats!” he added.
At one point in the trial the judge admonished the attorney for badgering a witness. A cete of badgers in the gallery gasped audibly at the insensitive, stereotypical remark.
The murder was later the subject of a popular true-crime podcast by a pod of whales.
