By Tim Sanders

What follows is one of the strangest sentences in journalistic history. It was taken, verbatim, from a January 3, 2006 Washington Post AP release by Jim Salter.

"We has survived because, unlike other two-headed animals, both mouths are connected to the same stomach, Sonnenschein said."

Now there is a sentence which both fires the imagination and leaves the brain in a smoky haze. Was the journalist still recovering from too much New Year’s Eve eggnog when he wrote the article? Did Mr. Sonnenschein have a serious grammatical problem, or an even more serious anatomical problem? Well, that is why, regardless of the humor it affords, one should never take a quote out of context.

People with two heads, just like people with tapeworms, may indeed use the editorial "we" whenever they want, but then the appropriate wording would be "we have survived." But the "We" in that sentence, it turns out, does not refer to Mr. Sonnenschein and his second head. No, if you were to read the entire article, you would learn that Mr. Leonard Sonnenschein is president of the World Aquarium in St. Louis, and that he probably doesn’t even have two tapeworms, let alone two heads. What he does have, however–or more precisely, what the St. Louis Aquarium has–is a four-foot long, two-headed albino rat snake. And the snake’s name is, you guessed it, "We."

According to the Salter article, the two-headed snake will be put up for auction on eBay, with a starting bid of $150,000. Salter quotes Sonnenschein as saying, apparently with a straight face:

"We expect the sale of We to be on the same level of demand as a priceless art object."
 

There was a photo of We the art object accompanying the article, and while the two-headed snake did look odd, I don’t think–or we don’t think–We is worth $150,000. Even if We were to live another 15 years–by which I mean the snake–when We died, all we’d have left would be dried snakeskin, and the makings of a $150,000 albino hatband with four eyes and only one tail. I suppose if we had a rat-infested corn crib, We could eat twice as many of the rodents–by which I mean the snake could. But for that kind of money, we could sell our corn crib, buy a Winnebago, and travel to Alaska, where the rats and the rat snakes all moved south to Seattle in the great rat migration of 1937. And even if we were able to convince an international snake cartel to put up the cash for We, at the very least we would expect We to do something a bit more spectacular than eat lots of rats, bite us twice as often as our regular snakes, and pose for hatband ads. Maybe if we could hear We sing a duet with itself, or if we could watch We slither into a courtroom and argue both sides of a civil case, then we might consider We worth something; not $150,000, but perhaps a couple of bucks.

But since there are a lot of folks nowadays with more money than sense, We may indeed make a tidy profit for Mr. Sonnenschein and his museum. By which I don’t mean "us," only "We" the snake.

But what do I know about two-headed rat snakes? Instead, let’s talk about cats. I know all about cats. For the past week, radio, TV, and Internet news sources have been telling and retelling the story of a cat who used the phone to call for help when his owner fell from his wheelchair. On December 29, Columbus, Ohio police received a 911 call from Gary Rosheisen’s apartment. There was no voice on Rosheisen’s end of the line, and when the cops arrived to investigate, they found Tommy, an orange and tan striped cat, lying on the living room floor by the telephone. Mr. Rosheisen said he’d fallen and couldn’t get up, due to a history of mini-strokes and osteoporosis. He said he got the cat three years ago and tried to train him to dial 911, but wasn’t sure if the cat had been paying attention during the training sessions. The Columbus police obviously felt the training had paid off, and the story made news all over the country.

And do I believe that there are people out there dumb enough to try to train a cat to dial a phone? Bear in mind that all of this happened in Columbus, Ohio, home of the Ohio State Buckeyes. And yes, I would have mentioned it even if I weren’t a Michigan Wolverine fan, because football fan or not, it is common knowledge that buckeyes are just one of many varieties of nuts in central Ohio.

We have owned several cats over the years. We have a family cat now, and Sylvia, like all of her predecessors, is as dumb as a sackful of two-headed hatbands. I could no more teach Sylvia to dial 911 than I could teach a gnat to recite the Gettysburg Address. I could set the phone on the floor, slather the "9" and the "1" buttons with tuna salad, and duct tape the receiver to her head, and Sylvia would never, ever, even by pure accident, be able to dial 911. This is a cat who will poop, and then strut proudly a full fifteen feet away from her deposit, tail aloft, before trying to cover the mess up by tossing showers of dirt from between her legs in no particular direction at all. Like other felines, she is physically and mentally incapable of mastering anything more complex than fur ball regurgitation.

If that fellow in Columbus had a cat with four heads and sixteen little paws–an albino cat named "Them," with a PhD in Advanced Telephone Studies from Ohio State–he could not teach it, or Them, to dial 911, even if he used an electric cattle prod.

And if all of this kitty call nonsense had happened anywhere other than Columbus, Ohio, we would believe that somebody was pulling our leg.

Unlike We, we have legs. Several of them.