Eccentric Flower:200909/A Tail of Bad Science

I have a friend - my boss, in fact - named McElwain, who is a Lamarckian. I was sitting by the stove with Bill and a visitor, when Bill's dog Penrod walked through the kitchen.

"How did your dog lose its tail?" the man asked. "Was it hit by a car, or what?"

"No," says Bill, "but her grandmother was."

"What?" says the man. "Are you trying to tell me this dog inherited the missing tail from its grandmother, who was hit by a car?"

"Something like that," said Bill. He leaned back and took a puff on his cigar. "Penrod's grandmother was hit by a car - right out here in front of the house - and we had to have her tail amputated. About a year later she had puppies -"

"- And they were all born without tails!"

"Just so. But, word about this got around, and on one night a roving band of militant Darwinians broke into the house, and grafted tails onto all the puppies."

"But you cut the tails back off, and so the acquired trait was passed on."

"Why would I do a thing like that?" asked McElwain. "I let the tails stay. It was no skin off my ass.

"At any rate, we gave all the puppies away except Penrod's mother. In due time she had puppies -"

"And they all had tails."

"Yes."

"So the Darwinists were satisfied - things were back to normal."

"The Darwinists were fit to be tied: They grafted the tail onto Penrod's mother. They knew that. Thus, Penrod and her brothers and sisters had inherited an acquired characteristic. They should have been born without tails, as their mother was born. Those Darwinists were in a bad situation."

"So what did they do?"

"What Darwinians always do: they broke in again, and cut off the puppies' tails."

"And that's why Penrod doesn't have a tail."

"That's why Penrod has no tail - Darwinian terrorists cut it off."

The visitor, an intelligent and well-rounded local physician, looked thoughtful for a while. Finally he asked, "Did Penrod have puppies?"

"She did," answered Bill, much pleased.

"Tail-less, I presume."

"Of course."

"But the Darwinists found out."

"They always do."

"So they broke in again and -"

"Yeah but this time," said Bill, "I was waiting for them. I mean I don't really care about the tails, but I was tired of having my house broken into. So this time I stayed up with a shotgun, loaded with rock salt. And when those damned Darwinians broke in here, boy, I just let them have it. I hit one, too - I heard her yelp."

"Her?"

"Yeah, a lot of those Darwinians are women. I think it appeals to their mothering instincts. Anyway, I haven't had any more trouble with Darwinians around here - not with the dogs, or with my frogs, either."

The doctor didn't even bother to ask about the frogs - there was an excited light in his eyes.

"You know Bill," he said, "I think I may know who one of those Darwinists was."

"Really?" said Bill, quite surprised.

"Yes," said the doctor. "I delivered a baby for a young woman the other day - quite a fine girl - one of your students, in fact."

"I'm not surprised," said Bill. "Which one?"

"I won't say," said the doctor. "But I think she may have been the gal you hit."

"You saw -"

"Yes: there I was, you know, delivering her baby girl, and damned if she didn't have a tail full of rock salt."

"She did? Which one?"

The doctor smiled. "Both of them."