MY HUMOR PIECE IN THE NEW YORKER

This ran today on the New Yorker's website. It contains several minor edits that I don't care for, but I guess that's Show Biz.

TALES OF PLURALITY

By J.C. Duffy

One day, a shrewdness of apes encountered a stench of skunks. The head ape called out, “Hey, who cut the cheese?” The head skunk walked over and sprayed him, saying, “Who’s the shrewd one now, my simian friend?”

An owl was running for reëlection in a parliament of owls, despite a recent scandal involving a dule of doves. “Let my constituents decide!” he defiantly told a bevy of reporters.

A crash of rhinos lay bleeding on the highway in the wreckage of their self-driving Tesla, as a tower of giraffes rubbernecked ghoulishly.

A conspiracy of lemurs became fans of QAnon. An unkindness of ravens called them a bunch of idiots.

A lone elk came upon a gang of elk. By chance, he was wearing the colors of an opposing gang, and they stabbed him to death.

A knot of frogs was late for a business meeting with a cackle of hyenas. “Sorry, but we were tied up!” one of the frogs quipped. It was a lame joke, but the hyenas couldn’t help but laugh.

The legless minister delivered his latest sermon before a congregation of alligators.

A band of gorillas performed at an open-mike night and went over big with a zeal of zebras. But when a flock of seagulls (the birds) requested a song by A Flock of Seagulls (the band), the lead gorilla confessed that he didn’t know it, and even the zebras lost their zeal. “Get the flock out of here!” the bass player yelled.

Never once has an intrusion of cockroaches said, “We beg your pardon.”

When Jenny Craig closed, a bloat of hippopotamuses switched to Nutrisystem.

An ambush of tigers waited, guns drawn, for the stagecoach to enter the mountain pass. “It’s a shame about the epidemic of crime in blue states,” a pitying of Republican turtledoves said, gratuitously.

A business of ferrets was failing. Many blamed its C.E.O., Elon Musk Ox, and his herd mentality.

A murder of crows was discovered standing over the dead bodies of a clew of worms. A sleuth of bears investigated the crime, and the crows were arrested. “This is going to be a tough case,” their defense attorney, a badger, said. “Harder than clowdering cats!” he added. At one point in the trial, the judge admonished the attorney for badgering a witness. A cete of badgers in the gallery gasped audibly at the insensitive, stereotypical remark. The murder was later the subject of a popular true-crime podcast by a pod of whales.