Subscribers can read the full version of this story by logging into our digital archive. You can also subscribe now or find out about other ways to read The New Yorker digitally.
ABSTRACT: SHOUTS & MURMURS spoof of pet books. “TESS, THE ORPHAN EARTHWORM” It was a muggy May evening and my husband Chuck’s full bait bucket was sitting on the kitchen counter. I plucked a wriggling little worm out of the tangle. We had adventures, Tess and I. I’d lay out a mount of fresh dirt on the floor and watch her wriggle her way in for a game of hide-and-seek. I was out scooping soil for her birthday cake when it happened. Unaware that Tess was inside the toaster, napping, Chuck decided to make himself a Pop-Tart. A few hours later, still sobbing, I carried the dangling little question mark of charred gristle that had been my Tess out to the back flower bed. “THEY CALL IT KNITWEAR; I CALL IT LOVE” Tea cozies, baby booties, long woolly scarves—to me, they’re living, cuddly, almost sentient beings. One fateful day, I took Pansy, the cutest pot holder ever crocheted by human hands, on a weekend visit to my friends Kathy and Neil, in Connecticut. The next morning, my hosts talked me into leaving Pansy home when we went out for brunch at a local inn. That afternoon, Pansy was nowhere to be found. When I returned home, I found a message from my hosts on my answering machine. In that grief-choked voice which can sound so much like giggling, Neil reported that Pansy had fallen into the kitchen garbage disposal; how it happened, he said, was a mystery for the ages.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/11/14/111114sh_shouts_mccall?printable=true#ixzz2FuAVdDeI
No comments:
Post a Comment