COLD TEDDY

A teddy bear was thrown into the sea. It drifted north until it reached the Arctic Ocean. Then the waters froze and it found itself trapped on pack ice near the island of Spitsbergen.

There are such things as Polar Bears, of course, but the teddy wasn't one of those, so it didn't feel comfortable in this environment. Indeed, it was so upset and lonely that it began to cry and one by one the big tears landed on the ice and froze rapidly.

These tears made a shape as they accumulated.

“A wolf! It's a wolf!” cried the teddy.

A passing walrus said, “Why should I be scared of that? For one thing, I don't believe you. You are a liar.”

The teddy was shocked. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you're the toy that cried wolf,” said the walrus.

The teddy scratched its head. “But doesn't that generate a paradox? If you don't believe that I made a wolf with my frozen tears because I'm the toy that cried wolf, then you don't believe what you've already decided to accept as the truth. You're using the fact that something exists to disprove that same something. That's a bit odd.”

But the walrus reacted with rage to this observation.

“Don't ruin my pun, you meanie!”

¶ To ruin the pun of a walrus is no easy tusk, I mean task.


(Image by Chris Harrendence)