When Dinosaurs Fly (or The Taming of the Shrew)

In celebration of next month’s fifth anniversary of this blog, today and the Wednesdays of February I’ll provide a link to the most visited post of each year. For 2011, that would be: “Faggot”Jesus, with Put Yourself in the Nativity Story a close second.

Just for fun, I thought I’d post this dialogue that I wrote for Midtown Spiritual Community in Atlanta, presented on May 15, 2005. This is for the kid in all of us, a kind of Mardi Gras confection. I haven’t changed a word! You can tell I grew up watching Mr. Peabody’s Improbable History and Fractured Fairy Tales on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

Narrator: Welcome to the primeval forest, inhabited by our evolutionary ancestors that have evolved out of the primordial soup which preceded it. Who woulda thought that such stinking slush could give rise to life? Even primitive forms?

Dinosaur: Hey! Who ya callin’ primitive?

Shrew: Do you have to talk so loud! You woke me up!

Dinosaur: I’m big, so I’m loud, you little shrew.

Shrew: I’m small, but I’m gonna outlive you!

Dinosaur: Who says?

Shrew: Natural selection.

Dinosaur: You mean “survival of the fattest”? Then I’m gonna outlast you and your pointy little snout.

Shrew: That’s survival of the fittest, not the fattest, you Darwinian failure! I’m going to evolve into something wonderful, I just know it.

Dinosaur: If Mother Nature can find you. You’re too small.

Shrew: And you’re too big!

Dinosaur: You’re doomed to eat insects and live in a tree the rest of your life.

Shrew: Maybe my life, but my descendants shall inherit the earth.

Dinosaur: The meek inheriting the earth. I say “ha”! I say “ha-ha”!

Shrew: You’ve gotta have dreams.

Dinosaur: My dreams are of leaving the planet.

Shrew: Becoming extinct?

Dinosaur: No, flying up in the sky. The last syllable of my name is “soar.” I want to soar in the skies.

Shrew: What’s a syllable?

Dinosaur: I don’t know. I don’t write this stuff.

Shrew: So, you’re going to fly?

Dinosaur: That’s my dream and I’m stickin’ to it.

Shrew: Why?

Dinosaur: I’m tired of throwin’ my weight around, that’s why. I’d like to be light as a feather.

Shrew: What’s a feather?

Dinosaur: See these things on my legs? Feathers!

Shrew: How’d you get them? Paste ‘em on?

Dinosaur: No. Born that way. Other dinosaurs made fun of me my whole life. Called me queer ‘cause I was different. But I see it as a step toward divinity.

Shrew: Divinity?

Dinosaur: God-like. To fly would be god-like. I want to be like the gods.

Shrew: What are gods?

Dinosaur: Those lights shining in the heavens at night. Those are gods. I want to reach for the stars!

Shrew: I bet my descendants will get there first.

Dinosaur: Oh what? [MOCKS:] Look, up in the sky! Is it a pterodactyl? A falling star? No, it’s Supershrew! Why would your descendants get there first? I already have feathers.

Shrew: But I already live in trees. And I can jump from branch to branch. It won’t be long before I sprout feathers too!

Dinosaur: What? A sort of “manifest destiny”? You shrews always had a cocky character.

Shrew: Look at you, you big lummox! How ya gonna get that tail off the ground?

Dinosaur: [LOOKS AT HER BEHIND] I’ll need a long runway, that’s for sure. Or a smaller caboose! [DREAMS:] I see myself becoming small and delicate and dainty. I want to sing rather than roar. I want to glide rather than stomp. I want to see far above and beyond this mucky swamp. I want to go south for the winter. [SIGHS]

Shrew: You wanna get smaller, and I wanna get bigger. [DREAMS:] I see myself becoming larger and smarter and powerful. I want to speak rather than squeak. I want to walk rather than crawl. I want to think outside this boxy swamp. And I too want to go south for the winter. [SIGHS] Oh well, I guess that will only happen when dinosaurs fly!

Dinosaur: You say that as if it ain’t gonna happen!

Shrew: I think your dreams are too big. Mine too. It’ll never happen!

Dinosaur: Ya gotta have faith.

Shrew: What’s faith?

Dinosaur: Faith is what I feel when I lay my eggs. I can’t see the next generation, but I know it’s there. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Shrew: That has a nice ring to it. We gotta shoot for the stars, I guess.

Dinosaur: Either that or return to the muck. The sky’s the limit, and maybe not even that.

Narrator: And so Shrew and Dinosaur evolved happily ever after. The tree shrew evolved eventually into human beings, which may or may not be an improvement, and one can still see the mousy shrewishness in human eyes whenever they’re afraid of not surviving and become greedy and controlling. And, despite the megalomania of Shrew, Dinosaur’s descendants flew into the sky first, evolving into the birds of the air, and you can still see Dinosaur’s fierceness in the eyes of the hawk or the eagle or any mother bird protecting her nest. We have yet to see if human beings and birds will live happily ever after. And who knows what they’ll evolve into?

THE END

Here’s an earlier post appropriate for the beginning of presidential primary season in the U.S.: Gerasene Demoniac Announces Presidential Bid

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Copyright © 2005 and 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.