Animal funny farm

Working in the Washington DC of 1982, I noticed that friends and colleagues cut Gary Larson’s drawings from the Washington Post and stuck them on their fridges or office walls.

On 28 October of that year, they were perplexed. Larson’s drawing featured a cow (standing human-style on its hind legs) behind odd-looking objects, bones of some kind, resting on a trestle table. The caption said, ‘Cow tools’. What did it mean? Next day, there were stories on the wire services saying Larson fans nationwide were in crisis. No one got the joke in ‘Cow tools’. There were discussions on university campuses and on TV and radio shows. A reader in Texas wrote to their local paper:

Enclosed is a copy of ‘Cow tools’ of last week. I have passed it round. I have posted it on the wall. Conservatively, some 40-odd professionals with doctrinal degrees in disparate sciences have examined it. No one understands it. Even my six-year-old can’t figure it out. We are going bonkers. Please help. What is the meaning of ‘Cow tools’? What is the meaning of life?

Most of Larson’s drawings are simpler to understand. He anthropomorphises animals into cunning/stupid humans and portrays man- (and woman-) kind as baleful, doomed dolts. The first to make me laugh (I see it was in November 1982) featured two bears chained into a motorcycle combination, forced to ride around a circus ring. The male wears a Tyrolean-style hat while the female’s head is adorned by a flowery concoction (Larson’s finicky about headgear, especially on animals). Man-bear barks at his contrite-looking partner,

‘Looks like a trap,’ I said. ‘Nonsense,’ you said. ‘No one would set a trap out here in the woods’, you said.

Larson’s bears can be clever, too. One is seen through the cross-hair, telescopic sights of a hunter’s rifle. He smiles oleaginously and points sideways to his unwitting companion, suggesting him as a better target.