Lend Me Your Ear

Mrs. Diesel and I were lying in bed on Saturday morning, having been awoken by the sound of our children squealing and pounding on things in the next room. The kids routinely get up two hours before we do on weekends so they can get a head start on making our house into a disaster area.

"I think you're cute," I announced to Mrs. Diesel, as I studied her features. "Even your weird little nose is kind of cute."

"My weird little nose should be growing on you by now," she replied.

We both snickered as we pictured her nose growing on me.

"Like how they grew a human ear on a rat," I said.

"Who is 'they'?"

"The evil scientists."

"What makes them evil scientists?"

"Well, they -- "

"Grew a human ear on a rat," she said.

"Exactly." I said.

"Why would they do something like that?"

"I think it makes the rats easier to handle in the lab. They probably got tired of trying to grab the rats by the tail."

"The human ear has long been considered an excellent handle," she noted.

"Think of what a time-saver that would be," I said. "One scientist would be like, 'hey, Bill, can you hand me that rat?' And then Bill would just grab the rat by his ear-handle and toss it to the other scientist."

"Uh huh."

"And the other scientist catches the rat and says, 'Thanks, Bill. Conducting inhumane experiments on rats is so much easier now that the rats have handles on them.' And then Bill is like, 'Shhhh! The rat can hear you!'"

"You know," Mrs. Diesel said, "Just because the rat has a human ear, that doesn't mean it can understand human speech."

"Mmmm," I said thoughtfully. "That's true of so many things with human ears."

"I wonder how the rat feels about having a giant ear sticking out of its back."

"The rat is probably like, 'Hey guys, can you keep it down? It's so loud in here. Not so much on this side, but over here it's like, wow. Really loud."

While we were having this conversation, the noise level continued to escalate in the next room.

"Speaking of which," Mrs. Diesel said, "We should probably get up and tend to the children,"

"Yeah," I said. "In a few more hours they'll be fashioning crude spears to hunt ear-rats."


I have humor-blogs.com growing out of my back.