many nails are in a standard horseshoe? (Who cares?) What does the Kelvin scale measure? (Kelvinators?) What does a Piscatologist excel in?
I took a guess at that one, missed it by a mile and got back that dirty look I had already given to What’s-Her-Name. It turns out that a Piscatologist is a fisherman. If I were you, I’d be careful who I called a Piscatologist - especially if he is bigger than you.
These criticisms aside, the most objectionable feature of Trivial Pursuit is: the game answers its own questions. Moreover, the answer on the card is the only one that counts. There is no room for any argument, no partial score for being part right and no right of appeal to a higher authority - no matter how wrong that card’s answer is. This is not only unfair. It’s un-American. We fought a war to do away with Hitler and now this game wants to impose the same type of autocratic control over our lives.
Here are some examples: Question - “Who ran off with a pussy cat?” Answer: “The Owl, in a beautiful pea green boat.” The hell it was an owl. It was Alex Schubert and there’s no question about it, he ran off with a real pussy cat. Incidentally, it wasn’t a “beautiful pea green boat”, either. It was a restored blue 1976 Corvette - but Trivial Pursuit insists it was an owl and there’s no arguing with it.
Here’s another one. Question: “What non-mechanical sport achieves the highest speed?” Answer: “Sky Diving”. This is absolute nonsense. Whoever made up that answer never saw Ted Johnson, with his fly rod intact and his creel full of speckled trout, being chased across that cleared forty next to Mill Creek by Teetzen’s bull.
We had gone around the table three or four times without anyone giving a correct answer. There had been some violent arguments and some of us weren’t speaking to others of us. It got to be my turn and the question was: “What important Western Hemisphere event occurred on July Fourth?”
Friends, I had the answer to that one and figured I’d win the game for sure and get a box of shells, a pair of tip-ups, some hand tied flies, or something like that. Well, the three of them got jealous and said the answer was the Declaration of Independence. They all claimed it occurred on that date.
That may be so, but it was also on July 4th that I caught a 26 inch Brown Trout on the Peshtigo River. They said the Declaration of Independence was more important. Imagine! We never got to see the answer on the card because I ripped it up and threw it away.
Relations in the neighborhood stayed strained for a few days and then the three of them got together and finally admitted they were wrong and I was right. We’re friendly again, but I don’t think we’ll play Trivial Pursuit any more.
Man has learned to live with The Bomb, Global Warming, Global Cooling, the Black Plague, Acid Rain, Asbestos Insulation, Unruly Wives and liberals. In spite of the threatening presence of those terrible catastrophes, he has learned to cope. He is able to lead a reasonably serene and pleasant existence - but only if his cabin is not occupied by pine squirrels.
Henry Robinson is a case in point. Henry supported all pseudo-environmentalist and Animal Rights organizations. He believed all of the world’s problems were directly or indirectly caused by gun ownership and could be solved if every firearm was confiscated and all gun owners were sent to prison for life - without either trial or possibility of parole.
Henry owned a cabin situated deep in the woods of Vilas County. Until the snows and springtime mud made it impossible to negotiate the two rut road leading to it, Henry would spend nearly every weekend in his hideaway, searching for morels, honey mushrooms and other edible fungi, putting out food for the birds and otherwise communing with nature.
In April, as soon as the weather and temperature allowed an artfully driven 4-wheel drive vehicle to successfully fight its way to his cabin, Henry Robinson would leave the city and travel north to open his cabin and prepare for the coming season’s beautiful experiences with the flora and fauna of the wild woods. It was one of his rites of spring.
Last year, when he made his first visit to the cabin, he opened the door, saw the condition of its interior and was aghast. What he saw brought him to a new and more complete understanding of the word “mess”. Pots and pans were scattered in the kitchen area. Paper toweling had been shredded. Even the snow shoes decorating his wall had been knocked down and the webbing destroyed.
Upon seeing this and other outrages, at first Henry thought the Dark Age Vikings or the more modern Clockwork Orange gang had appeared and sacked the place. Then he saw a pine squirrel scurry through the hole it had chewed in the ceiling and up into the safety of the attic.
Further investigation showed a second hole, slightly larger than a silver dollar, had been gnawed through the outer wall of the cabin. Henry knew what had happened. After he had closed the cabin in November, driven by the cold, a pine squirrel, one of Mother Nature’s woodsy creatures, had entered his building. Mother Nature’s woodsy creature chewed the hell out of Henry’s mattress in order to get enough material to build its own nest in the attic insulation.
The squirrel, unconcerned with snow or sleet or wind chill temperatures, wintered there in his snug attic sanctuary. From time to time it would rouse from it half-sleep hibernation, descend and chew the hell out of whatever had been left unchewed on the main floor of the cabin. Henry’s love and admiration for Mother Nature’s woodsy creatures took a backstep.
Many human beings know there are various powders and pastes that will terminally discourage ants, mosquitoes and black gnats. Even wood ticks present no problem to those people because they have the foresight to provide themselves with N-Diethyl- meta-toluamide laden sprays. They know mouse poison will take care of mice. They know rat poison will kill pine squirrels.
For many human beings who don’t like to use poison to discourage the uninvited pine squirrels from entering their cabins, there is an obvious solution. Get a gun and shoot the destructive little (deleted). In Henry Robinson’s case, the question was: How do you get rid of pine squirrels if you don’t like to use poisons and believe guns are nasty?
Henry Robinson was a proud member of all Animal Rights groups. The thought of imposing capital punishment on the offending squirrel never occurred to him. He opened two cans of beans, cleaned the covers and nailed them over the holes in the walls. He went home believing he had humanely evicted his non-rent paying animal guests.
During the week an awful thought occurred to him. By nailing can covers over the holes, he may have trapped the squirrel inside his cabin. Would it be unable to get out? Would the creature die inside the cabin and smell up the place? He bought a wire mesh box trap.
On his next trip north, he was relieved to see new holes drilled next to the ones he had already patched with the tin can covers. He was not relieved to see the hole in the package of flour and the wide distribution of its contents. He was not relieved to see what the pine squirrel had done to his supply of toilet paper.
Remembering squirrels are often seen on bird feeders, Henry concluded they must like seeds. He baited his box trap with the sunflower seeds he stuck into a generous glob of peanut butter. Then he carefully pushed the device into the attic and waited. The next morning the desire result had been obtained. The trap contained a squirrel. The squirrel had a bobbed tail, probably shot off, Henry thought, by some terrible hunter.
As he drove to release the squirrel at a place far distant from his cabin, Henry experienced a shock of recognition. He was surprised to recognize he no longer considered the pine squirrel to be one of his furry friends. He considered it to be a destructive beast that, without provocation, had attacked and vandalized his
