Your less quotable livestock

Just so we're on the same page going in - there may be some tough talk about Norway coming.

So, a few years back I was visiting my cousin in Denver and her family and was talking to her son* who was at the time 1 believe two years old.

*For those who care about the specifics of such things, that would make him my first cousin, once removed.  Yes, I'm sure.  Go look it up.  Vizsla = Knowledge.

We were have a deep and thought provoking discussion on the sounds that various animals make, as one does at fashionable dinner parties.  He had expressed some strong viewpoints on how the Lion goes. (Spoiler alert - 'Roar').  Then we covered Snake (hiss), Hyenas (just an excuse to laugh really loudly) and then - because I was caught up in the general theme of 'Critters of the Veldt' I asked what noise the Hippo made. 

This was followed by an awkward silence as all parties involved realized that none of us had the faintest idea what noise the Hippo made.  Finally the boy was forced to admit that he did not know and asked what the answer was.  Because I didn't want to appear uninformed, and because I was the one who'd brought the stupid question up in the first place I was forced to punt.

And so I responded 'Hippos don't make noise.  Hippos are very quiet.'*  He absorbed this new information with awed amazement and in fact repeated it back to me at regular intervals for the rest of the evening.

*This is of course a lie.  The noise a hippo actually makes is the sound of them stomping the everlasting piss out of you for little to no reason, because it turns out that hippos are actually bad ass sons of bitches who are only prevented from ripping your spine out and beating you to death with it by the lack of opposable thumbs.  Yeah, those Hippos are one mean motha-f... <SHUT YO MOUTH!>  Just talkin' bout Hippos. <AND WE CAN DIG IT!>

The point I was getting to before the above footnote got out of control is that there exists a definite subgroup of the animal kingdom of all those animals who sadly do not have a commonly associated sound that one can share with preschoolers.

For some of them it's simply that they have no capacity to make cute noises.  Rabbits, for example, have no vocal cords.  This means that anytime you actually hear a rabbit making noise it means that something extraordinarily unpleasant is happening to said rabbit, and it will shortly cease being a rabbit with any material concerns.

Deer aren't known as big talkers either, and while I don't actually know about the status of their vocal cords, I suspect this might be Natures way of preventing our forests from being just one long screaming refrain of 'HOLY SH*T, THEY SHOT STEVE!!!  THEY F***ING SHOT STEVE!!!'*

*Deer swear a lot.  True fact.

Where this is all going -  Norway.

In my traipsing around the internet (well, OK, Facebook.) my attention was directed by Helpful Friend Claudia (Q to her peeps) to this video.

Yes, the good people of Norway are directing their attention the the timeless question of what noise exactly does a Fox make.*

*The obvious answer to America - The sound of grotesquely irresponsible journalism

Now, I want to say right off that I really, REALLY wish that the Fox did in fact make the sound 'Hatte Hatte Hatte Ho.  Also, every music video ever made EVER should include a CG fox performing scat (the music style, not the poo.  Try to stay with me.)

However,  the video in question also made me have to once again acknowledge the existence of the Furries and their even more troubling subgroup - the Yiffers.  No, I'm not going to explain them, you'll have to Google them.  But be certain your image search is turned off.

Apparently the comedy duo in question has been besieged with offers for record deals based on this effort, which to be fair is pretty funny.

See, now this is what happens when a significant portion of your country eats reindeer.