There’s an old Mexican tale that claims at midnight on Christmas Eve, the animals will kneel and lie in the barn and speak with one another until dawn.
Many a folk even tested the story by hiding in barn lofts and hay fields. And some claim to have obtained a record of last year’s discussions, along with two cases of lyme disease. Here are the top 12 subjects the animals discussed.
1. Will veganism could catch on with the humans, or is it just a fad? The calves would sleep a lot better at night knowing the truth.
2. Will humans stop testing brain-eating larvae on rats and their cousins the mice? Or should they organize another plague?
3. Do insects go to heaven the way we do? And if so, do they have a soul?
4. Just because they brush their teeth and use words like imprecation and sangfroid, does that make them superior? Can they hear the sound of the cosmos?
5. Has anyone been re-reading Ovid lately? (There’s always one egghead in the barn.) The only literary discussion: whether or not Goldilocks should be locked up for breaking and entering.
6. Ontological pluralism and the near extinction of Mexico’s vaquitas.
7. Is the new Spiderman movie realistic?
8. Are cows and their methane discharges really ruining the planet. Or is it another stupid human excuse for their own mess?
9. Endless cohetes. Just in this neighborhood, there are a dozen roof dogs with powder burns. At six in the morning, it’s not just a disturbance, it takes years off your life. It’s got to be the reason Quetzalcoatl (the world’s amazing feathered snake) never returned.
10. Horses being tied to a tree, so they cannot move their necks all day, and aren’t able to drink or sneeze. It’s torture. Are these dimwitted horse owners training them to be catwalk models?
11. Can fighting cocks be retrained to teach physical fitness?
12. The rabbits need some time off. Their reproduction scores are agonizing work for them. But word is that they do it day in, day out, because they’re so frightened of joining the Dodo.
“Man is a fraying rope tied between beasts and what will later be – a rope over an abyss, a fragile bridge and not an end.” That was Nietzsche. (Maybe the new creatures of the future will have more respect – the egghead again. Yes, he’s an owl.)
And then dawn shimmered gently through the barn transom. And all the animals went back to their thoughts on these subjects and more. We’ll try to keep our readers appraised of what is discussed this year. Many suspect that poaching and killing rhinos for their nose horns or large cats with high-powered ballistics to be bat-s--t crazy, especially for imbeciles related to political leaders.