A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the skunk stunk. Then an adjoining tree, not yet cut down to a stump, began to emit a noise from a bough that protruded from its trunk, a hissing sound that was soon discernible as speech. The tree, via its limb’s hiss-speech, remarked loudly that the animal and vegetable kingdoms did in fact both possess a sense of smell, of a fashion, but that animals had honed it to a sharp sensory tool whereas plants more imprecisely detect volatile organic compounds, which allowed for favorable or unfavorable orientation vis-à-vis zoological allies and pests, toxins (whether zoological, botanical, or protistan) and so forth, but that notwithstanding the finer points of olfaction, this or any other summation of the thoughts of the skunk and the stump regarding odors and their relative pleasantness was irresponsible speculation. It went on for a while in that vein. Finally, the skunk sitting on the stump jumped down, bumping his rump on a hump in the mud, and then debunked as junk science what the adjunct to the trunk had uttered. “Not to mention,” the skunk said, “that trees can’t talk.” The hissing fell away to reveal the sound of the wind coming through the leaves. “Right you are,” the wind said to the skunk. “Right you are.”
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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