Writing Funny Animals

I like funny writing. So, I'm always taking workshops or listening to speakers talk about how they write funny. And what I keep hearing is that taking two things that don't normally go together and jamming them into a situation can help set up a funny scene. As most of my funniest true stories occur when I've stuck animals in a place they don't normally belong, this makes total sense to me. You know, the goat in the car routine, the chickens in the bathroom story.

So, here are few things to think about when putting livestock in unusual places:

1. The time it takes for a baby goat to learn to jump up on the kitchen table can be measured in days, not weeks, months, or years.

2. Kitchen tables, especially when they have a table cloth, make it hard for little cloven hooves to gain purchase - thereby causing said goat to go sliding off the end.

3. Baby goats when "maaing" sound like a screaming human baby. Keeping them in the basement when they scream can lead to the neighbors reporting you to the police.

4. Modern disposable diapers that form a gelatin when wet will stay on a lamb better than a baby goat. Kids' (as in baby goats) butts slope, causing the wet diaper to fall off when wet. Lambs' butts are square, so wet diapers stay on better.

5. Disposable diapers also melt when they come in contact with a warm woodstove and unfortunately baby goats and lambs who have been brought into the house to warm up seem to like running around the woodstove.

6. Within a couple weeks, baby goats can leap from floor to table to counter to the top of the refrigerator in three bounds.