David Sedaris: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

“I beg your pardon?” said the white rat.

The female approached the water bottle, stuck her paws into the spigot, and began to wash them. “It’s nice to believe that these sicknesses just ‘befall’ us,” she said. “We blame them on our environment and insist that they could happen to anyone, but in truth we bring them on ourselves with hatefulness and negativity.”

The white rat coughed up some phlegm with bits of lung in it. “So this is my fault?”

“Oh, I think that’s been proven,” the female said. “You might not have realized how negative you were being-maybe you were passive-aggressive. Maybe no one cared enough to point it out, but I have to call things like I see them. Just as everyone does to me, only in the opposite direction. ‘How come you’re always so sunny?’ they ask, and ‘Doesn’t your mouth hurt from all that smiling?’ Some interpret it as overexuberance, but to me it’s a kind of vaccine-as long as I’m happy and I love everybody, I can’t get sick.”

“Never?” asked the white rat.

“Oh, I had a flu once, but it was completely my own fault. Someone I mistook for a friend took to criticizing me behind my back-saying things regarding my weight and so forth. I got wind of it, and for all of three minutes I wished her ill. I’m not talking death, just a little discomfort-cramping, mainly. I was just starting to visualize it when I sneezed, which was my body’s way of saying, ‘Whoa,’ you know, ‘that’s not cool.’ Then my nose stopped up and I came down with a fever.”

“And what about your supposed friend, the one who said cruel things behind your back? If you got a flu, what happened to her?” asked the white rat.

“Well, nothing yet,” the female said. “But sometimes the body bides its time.” Her pink eyes narrowed just slightly. “I can bet that when something does happen, though, it’ll be a lot worse than a flu. Diabetes, maybe.”

“You sound pretty hopeful,” the white rat observed.

The female scowled, then smiled so hard the corners of her mouth touched her eyes. “Not at all. I wish her the best.”

The white rat slumped against the wall and put a hand to his forehead. “I can’t think of anybody I dislike. Then too, I’ve been alone since my last roommate died.”

“That’s another cause of cancer,” the female told him. “You need to get out, socialize. Storytelling is pivotal to our well-being, as are nonethnic jokes and riddles.” Food pellets dropped from a chute beside the water bottle, and she took a bite of one. “I heard somewhere that limericks can cure both heart disease and certain types of cancer. Can you beat that? Limericks!”

The white rat knitted his brow.

“They’re poems,” the female explained. “You know, like, ‘There once was a mouse dada da / who dada da da da da da .’ ”

“Oh, right,” said the rat, and, silently recalling one about a prostitute and a dead cat, he chuckled. “And what about haiku? Are they good for curing shorter diseases?”

“I know when I’m being mocked,” the female said, “but that’s okay. You’re sick and are going to die. I, meanwhile, am perfectly healthy with good teeth and a positive attitude toward life, so joke away if it makes you feel any better.”

She’d just cracked open that smile of hers when the mesh ceiling parted and a human hand appeared. At first it seemed to be made of wax, that’s how rigid and opaque it was, but as it neared and pinned her to the floor, the female smelled rubber and understood that it was encased in a glove. Then came a second hand, this one bearing a hypodermic needle, and as the tip sank into her stomach, releasing its mad punch of viruses, the white rat settled against the wood chips and thought.

Most limericks, it seemed to him, involved a place. “There was a young mole from Des Moines,” say, or “In Yorktown there once lived a ferret.” He didn’t know where he was, though. It was a lab, obviously, but the location was anyone’s guess. With this in mind, he came up with the following:

A she-rat I had as a roomie

saidillness just strikes if you’re gloomy.

Since she was injected

withAIDS, I’ve detected

anoutlook a lot less perfumy.

Funny, he thought, but it actually did make him feel better.

The cow was notoriously cheap, so it surprised everyone when she voted yes for the secret Santa scheme. It was the horse’s suggestion, and she backed it immediately, saying, “I choose the turkey.”

The pig, who considered himself an authority on all things gifty, cleared his throat. “That’s not actually the way it works,” he said. “It’s secret, see, so we each draw a name and keep it to ourselves until Christmas morning.”

“Why do you always have to be like that?” the cow asked, and the duck sighed, “Here we go.”

“First you ask me to give someone a Christmas present,” the cow continued, “and then you tell me it has to be done your way. Like, ‘Oh, I have four legs so I’m better than everyone else.’ ”

“Don’t you have four legs?” the pig asked.

The cow loosed something between a moan and a sigh. “All right, just because you have a curly tail,” she said.

The pig tried looking behind him, but all he could see were his sides. “Is it curly curly? ” he asked the rooster. “Or curly kinky? ”

“The point is that I’m tired of being pushed around,” the cow said. “I think a lot of us are.”

This was her all over, so rather than spending the next week listening to her complain, it was decided that the cow would give to the turkey and that everyone else would keep their names a secret.

There were, of course, no shops in the barnyard, which was a shame, as all of the animals had money, coins mainly, dropped by the farmer and his plump, moody children as they went about their chores. The cow once had close to three dollars and gave it to a calf the family was taking into town. “I want you to buy me a knapsack,” she’d told him. “Just like the one the farmer’s daughter has, only bigger and blue instead of green. Can you remember that?”

The calf had tucked the money into his cheek before being led out of the barn. “And wouldn’t you know it,” the cow later complained, “isn’t it just my luck that he never came back?”

She’d spent the first few days of his absence in a constant, almost giddy state of anticipation. Watching the barn door, listening for the sound of the truck, waiting for that knapsack-something that would belong only to her.

When it no longer made sense to hope, she turned to self-pity, then rage. The calf had taken advantage of her, had spent her precious money on a bus ticket and boarded thinking, So long, sucker .

It was a consolation, then, to overhear the farmer talking to his wife and learn that “taking an animal into town” was a euphemism for hitting him in the head with an electric hammer. So long, sucker.

Milking put the cow in close proximity to humans, much closer than any of the other animals, and she learned a lot by keeping her ears open: who was dating whom, how much it cost to fill a gas tank, any number of useful little tidbits-the menu for Christmas dinner, for instance. The family had spent Thanksgiving visiting the farmer’s mother in her retirement home and had eaten what tasted like potato chips soaked in chicken fat. Now they were going to make up for it “big-time,” the farmer’s wife said, “and with all the trimmings.”